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Photographed by Mark Peckmezian | Styled by Jessica dos Remedios

For the first year my girlfriend and I were together, we kept our relationship open. This was largely my decision, and one might say I took advantage of the privileges of our open agreement more than she did. The couple times she suggested we be monogamous, I refused. Though we were both very in love, it’s clear to me now that I had the power—the relationship was mostly on my terms. This was true even down to the little things; she usually made time to hang out with my friends, and do the things I wanted to do, rather than vice versa.

Then, last December, after much deliberation, we decided to be monogamous. I was happy about it—I finally felt ready to devote myself to her fully and to make our relationship stronger. But soon afterward, I sensed a distance on her part. It was on Christmas day, while I was opening presents with my family, that she came clean via text: she was cheating on me.

Predictably, this precipitated an immediate panic attack. I collapsed into a stack of presents and began gasping for air as my dad frantically searched the house for my then recently deceased grandfather’s leftover Valium. (Though funny-ish now, it was less lolz at the time.) I was intensely hurt, and terrified we might break up, but beyond that, the shift of power left me completely disoriented. How could I have gone from CEO of this relationship to fired in an instant? But even in the midst of my confusion, one thing was very clear: I had been taking my girlfriend for granted.

All relationships have a power dynamic, and it’s usually clear who has the reins. When you have control, it’s difficult to imagine it ever being any other way. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, your ego inflates, and it seems almost instinctual to see how much you can get away with. Stupidly, you don’t expect your partner could ever turn the tables on you. In some relationships, the power dynamic is more subtle, a constant ebb and flow of leverage. In others, the scales are not so even.

One friend of mine actually chooses, over and over, not to have the upper hand, by always dating controlling women. Despite his constant complaining that his girlfriends boss him around, assign him chores, and drag him to boring social events, deep down, you can tell he loves it—he lives to be The Pet. He even loves complaining about it. Somewhat similarly, I know many people who like to “date up,” to bask in the reflective glory of someone more successful, wealthier, or of higher social status than themselves. In a way, being dominated is what enables them to respect their partner. Sort of like Yves Saint Laurent and his long-term partner, Pierre Bergé. I recently read an article that described how Bergé never walked in front of Saint Laurent, but always one step behind. This one little detail speaks volumes about the nature of their relationship, and the power dynamic that made them both happy and comfortable.

Meanwhile, a close girlfriend of mine insists, “It’s always better to be the 10 dating the 7.” Better that your partner worship you, in other words. As it happens, this was my mother’s point of view too. When I was growing up, she told me point blank, “It’s best to date ugly guys, because they love you more.”

Personally, however, I’ve always preferred my relationships to be more even-keeled. Like, I know I always say I want to date James Franco, but if it came down to it, would I really want to be the 7 to the 10? No way—I’m far too jealous, insecure, and attention-starved to handle that.

My friend Erika Allen, a 27-year-old editor at The New York Times, is all too familiar with uneven power balances. “Back when I was in college, this guy pursued me for months,” Erika told me, a tinge of resentment still in her voice. At the beginning, she explained, she could take it or leave it. He said “I love you” after only two months, which was earlier than she was willing to reciprocate. But eventually, things got serious. “And then I let my guard down,” she said. “Suddenly he was the least available person on the planet. It’s weird—you don’t care, you don’t care, and then all of a sudden you care so much. And usually your partner cares too, so it’s fine. But in this situation, as soon as I cared, he totally checked out.”

In other words, Erika had lost the higher ground, and her ego sunk along with it. “It was amazing how debilitating it was,” she remarked. “The suddenness of the flip made me so desperate that there was no possibility of pulling back or reassessing the situation. Instead, I just tried to force him to be the boyfriend I wanted him to be. Soon after, he broke up with me, and it took me longer to get over the relationship than we were actually together.” For her boyfriend, it was all about the chase—the hunt for power—and once he achieved it, the dynamic no longer felt exciting. It’s like that Barbara Kruger quote: “You want it, you buy it, you forget it.”

We all know the deal. Too often we want what we can’t have, and we find people who are too available unattractive. Human psychology is embarrassingly simple that way. And as we get older and enter into more relationships, these tendencies become increasingly transparent, and thus easier to manipulate. And as childish as it may sound, we all still play these games—well into adulthood. “It feels like game-playing, but it really works,” Erika marveled. “If you feel your partner is taking you for granted, you can just say, all right, I’m going to make myself less available this week. Predictably, this makes them want you more, and the turnaround is usually so fast, it’s almost a joke.”

But sometimes, even when you know how to play the game, you can’t help but act like a psycho anyway. And that’s what happened when I found out my girlfriend had cheated. In that moment, I should have walked away, let her regret what she’d done, and sweat it out. But I was frantic, so instead I called her 33 times, then showed up at her apartment, my face all red and puffy and slurring from the zillion Valium I took. When she told me that she “needed space to think,” I just laid face-down on the floor and refused to leave her bedroom. Unattractive?

Erika broke it down for me: “When you’re hurt, or when the tables are turned on you, sometimes the instinct is to try and assert power in another way—by being overly emotional, or saying, ‘You hurt me so badly.’ You’re just desperate to get back to your normal, loving relationship state. But that method rarely works. What you really should do is walk away and have lunch with someone else.”

Eventually, my girlfriend and I were able to work things out, and our relationship has since leveled off to a more healthy, even power balance. And although it was an awful experience, in the end, her turning the tables made me realize how important she is to me. It also led me to wonder: Is it possible to fully appreciate someone without the threat of losing them?

We all know when we’re being out of line. In the past, when partners of mine have put up with a barrage of my bitchiness, I’ve thought, “Are you really going to let me get away with this?” While it’s natural to seek the upper hand, it turns out that, if you have too much power over your partner, it can become surprisingly unattractive. Power is inextricably linked to respect, and to truly respect your partner, you have to believe that they would leave you. At the same time, the real challenge is learning to appreciate your partner before it gets to that point, and recognizing a good thing when it’s good.

Hair: Joey George; Makeup: Morgane Martini

On Sciortino: Sonia by Sonia Rykiel

The post The Relationship Power Struggle: Is It Always Better to Have the Upper Hand? appeared first on Vogue.

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Photographed by Mark Peckmezian | Styled by Jessica dos Remedios

Last weekend, in the penthouse of an upscale, downtown hotel, I attended my first sex party. I went with a friend of mine—I’ll call her Anne—who’s been bugging me to come along to this particular event for months, on the grounds that I can’t call myself a true sex writer until I’ve been to an orgy. Fair enough, I thought.

“It’s the best sex party in New York, with the most fun, attractive crowd,” Anne assured me, adding that the attendees are a mix of swingers, “burners” (Burning Man–types), and fetish people. I was skeptical. How amazing could the participants of a paid orgy really be, even if it was invite-only? I also had serious reservations about whether I would actually be able to hook up amidst a crowd of “roughly 100 people.” But I trusted Anne, because she knows a lot about this stuff. See, Anne and her husband are in an open marriage: They’re happy, successful, attractive, deeply in love, and they also get to sleep with whomever they want. How unfair.

I’ve written previously about my own attempt to make an open relationship work. The year my girlfriend and I were open, our relationship was strained by arguments and insecurity, and our subsequent attempt at monogamy didn’t work out either. Sadly, two weeks ago, she and I broke up. And I have since finally admitted it to myself: monogamy just isn’t for me. Or at least not right now. The problem is, I’m still in the dark about how to make a nonmonogamous relationship function. It just feels like there’s so much working against you—jealousy, possession, unwilling partners, and a weighty social stigma. My hope was that spending time with Anne and her husband, as well as a room full of orgiastic swingers, would give me some insight into how I could have my relationship cake and eat it too.

According to Anne, a 32-year-old nurse, being nonmonogamous wasn’t a desire but a necessity. “In my late teens and early twenties I had two long-term relationships, one with a man and one with a woman,” she explained. “In both cases they were older than me, and both tried to convince me that when you really love someone, you don’t want to be with other people. I thought that because they were older, they knew better. So I tried it, but both times I failed miserably—it was stressful, I cheated so much, and I hurt my partners.” During that time Anne realized that, in fact, her desire to get laid by other people didn’t mean she loved her partners any less. “Restricting myself doesn’t make me happy,” she went on, “so after the second relationship ended, I said, ‘This is stupid, I’m never promising monogamy to anyone ever again.’”

That decision has worked out well for her, because she ended up meeting her perfect match. “My husband and I met through a couple that we were both sleeping with separately,” she said. “And there was never any expectation of monogamy.” She describes their marriage as being “very open,” but there are still ground rules. “Initially we had a zip-code rule,” she explained. “When we were in the same city, we could hook up with other people together—threesomes, sex parties, etcetera—and when he traveled for work, we could play separately.” However, as their relationship became stronger, their boundaries loosened, and now they can hook up whenever, as long as their extracurricular sex remains casual. “You have to challenge yourself,” Anne said. “If something doesn’t feel comfortable, you ask yourself why that is, and try to understand if and why your jealousy is irrational.”

But back to the sex party. Clearly, my biggest dilemma was what to wear: A cocktail dress? A gown? Lingerie under a trench coat? After much deliberation, I finally decided on a candy-pink-and-white eighties Escada power suit and white stilettos, figuring that, if ever there were a time to look like a horny version of the First Lady, this was it.

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Photo: Courtesy of Karley Sciortino

Walking into the hotel, I was slightly intimidated by how many beautiful, well-dressed people there were. (Anne was right.) For the first two hours, people mostly danced, drank the free booze, and ate canapes. Many of the guests were clearly already friends or “playmates,” and the atmosphere was surprisingly classy, even reserved. It wasn’t until midnight that the suits and cocktail dresses began to come off. Suddenly the many beds, couches, and bathtubs were filled with people going at it.

Popular depictions of swingers are usually sensational or retro, but the crowd at the party seemed like normal, nice people who were no different from me, which was encouraging. I instantly noticed how respectful everyone was. Before engaging with another person, it was customary to ask, “Can I touch you?” The couples were very frank about the advantages of “the lifestyle,” as it’s called. One said that listening to each other’s hook-up stories was their ultimate turn on. Another couple, when asked about the virtues of being open, said that it prevents them from getting lazy or taking each other for granted—the slight competition keeps them engaged and motivates them to win each other’s affection every day.

Sex parties like this one, and discussions about alternatives to monogamy, have been getting increasing media coverage in recent years. Dan Savage, of course, is an active proponent of what he calls “monogamish”—opening the door of your relationship just a crack, to keep it from blowing off its hinges, as he puts it. The Ethical Slut, which is probably the quintessential book on nonmonogamy, has been selling consistently since its publication in 1997. And then there’s Sex at Dawn, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s 2010 bestseller, which argues that monogamy goes against human nature. The book’s enormous popularity spawned countless articles and debates about whether monogamy is in fact a social construct, and one that goes against our biology.

But what do the alternatives look like in practice? To get a more detailed idea of how people manage nonmonogamy successfully, I’d spoken with Dr. Zhana Vrangalova, a researcher and adjunct professor of human sexuality at NYU. Vrangalova had explained that nonmonogamous relationships generally fall into one of three main categories: swinging, polyamory, and open relationships. Swingers are the most couple-centric of the three—these are lovers in a committed relationship who have strictly casual sex with other people, which they typically engage in together, at a swingers’ party or some other “lifestyle” event. Open relationships are similar in that a committed couple can have casual hook-ups, but their extracurricular sex tends to happen independently. These couples will usually create specific boundaries based on their personal comfort levels—for instance, a “no sleepovers” rule, or an “area-code” rule. Finally, polyamorous refers to people who have multiple simultaneous relationships that are not just sexual, but emotional and romantic as well. For instance, one could have a primary partner and a secondary partner, or three or four people could all be romantically linked together, known as a triad or a quad, respectively.

In other words, it’s pretty complicated, and making it work requires serious effort. And from what I gathered at the sex party, this is very much the case. I was repeatedly struck, not just by their respectful demeanor, but also by how thoroughly—almost tediously—the partners communicated. Because trust is key, people are very vocal and direct about their desires and comfort levels. “What’s your rule?” was probably the most common question of the evening, as people tried to gauge each other’s relationship boundaries. I had a girl in her early thirties walk up to me and say, “Hey, would you like to play?” When I nodded yes, she said, “OK, but it has to be on this bed, because that’s my husband getting a blow job over there, and our rule is that we can play independently as long as we are in the same room.”

There was also a certain lingo that everyone there seemed familiar with. At one point, a group was discussing how they deal with “N.R.E.,” which someone eventually explained to me stands for “new relationship energy.” “N.R.E. is inevitable,” one woman said. “When your partner is having N.R.E. with a new hook-up, it can make you feel uncomfortable or jealous, but you have to remind yourself that it’s normal, and that it will eventually fade.” The unashamed, straightforward nature of it all was strangely charming.

I kept thinking that, underneath all the openness, there had to be a considerable base level of security in these relationships. It can’t be easy to say, “Have fun at the orgy, honey,” if you suspect your partner might leave you for one of his or her hook-ups. Anne confirmed this. “Security in your relationship is critical,” she urged. “But confidence in yourself and your self-worth is equally important. I know that I’m a good, valuable person, and that even if my husband left me for someone else, I would be fine. That’s a big deal.” And here is where I might run into challenges. Even if you’re a confident person, and confident in your sexuality, feeling secure in a relationship is a more slippery slope. At least for me. I’ll admit that I can be a jealous person and a total hypocrite—I want to be free to do whatever I want while my partner stays locked in a cage. (Duh.) Many of my past relationships have been tainted by insecurity, jealousy, cheating, and lying, often fueled by bad communication and secrecy.

By comparison, the couples at the party seemed open and honest in a way that many “normal” couples aren’t. Let’s not kid ourselves: adultery is rife. In a way, the socially accepted norm of monogamy requires lying. It’s almost like monogamous couples actually prefer to be lied to rather than deal with the uncomfortable reality of extramarital attraction. With nonmonogamy, you’re admittedly entering into risky territory. But with ground rules and communication, the result could be a more honest, fulfilling relationship. And since keeping jealousy in check and feeling secure can be the hardest parts of maintaining a relationship for me, I began to wonder if nonmonogamy could teach me something on a deeper level that monogamy couldn’t—if perhaps these orgy people were really onto something.

At the party, I ended up getting to second base—further than I expected to go—with a Williamsburg-ish-looking couple in their twenties. Still, my nerves eventually led me to drink a little too much, and I ended up falling asleep at the height of the orgy. (Embarrassing.) I was eventually woken up by a very nice woman. “Sorry, honey, you can’t sleep on this bed,” she said. “People need to have sex here.”

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever. 

Hair: Joey George; Makeup: Morgane Martini

The post Breathless: That Time I Went to a Sex Party appeared first on Vogue.

When I first moved to New York, four years ago, I was a poor 24-year-old struggling to support myself as a writer. I worked part-time as a waitress at a Chinese restaurant and lived in a particularly awful Bushwick apartment in which, to access the bathroom or kitchen, you had to exit the building and enter through a separate door. Unglamorous. My boyfriend at the time, also a writer, came from a wealthy family who supported him, which meant he never had to worry about depressingly meager paychecks.

At the beginning of our relationship, money was never something I considered—we split everything down the middle, which was fine with me, because that’s how all my previous relationships had worked. But eventually, especially during financially rough periods for me, I began to resent the fact that he almost never offered to pay for anything—not even for a $20 lunch. He had his dad’s credit card, while, for me, $20 represented more than an hour of scrubbing sticky pools of soy sauce off the floor and smelling like Sriracha. My resentment was exacerbated by my ex’s habit of criticizing my level of productivity—according to him, I wasn’t writing as frequently or as well as I should be. He couldn’t seem to understand that having to work a crappy job 30 hours a week put me at a distinct disadvantage, while his wealth allowed him the luxury of writing as often as he pleased. Over time, what I originally thought of as positive encouragement began to seem like snobby judgment, and I just couldn’t relate to him anymore.

I’ve always hated talking about money. But in romantic relationships, the issue is ultimately unavoidable. Money problems are a primary cause of divorce, right up there with infidelity. In my experience, financial issues are rarely detectable at the beginning of a relationship. We overlook a lot in the early stages of romance, when an excess of flattery and orgasms renders us basically blind. Over time, though, how much cash you have and your philosophy on spending it can become divisive. And while it’s no longer overtly scandalous to date someone of a different financial status—we’ve come a long way since Jack and Rose—I think the deeper incompatibilities within a relationship usually come down to dollars, cents, and rent checks.

A friend of mine, a 31-year-old art critic and consultant I’ll call Ryan, has experienced multiple instances of money getting in the way of his love life. Ryan’s the son of a wealthy doctor, and after a year of dating his girlfriend from grad school, he thought she began to feel his life was a bit too breezy next to her middle-class hustle. “My girlfriend saw my wealth as a personal defect,” Ryan said. “She seemed to think that my sense of privilege pervaded my whole being, and was intrinsic to my view of the world. She liked to say that I was ‘bohemian because I could afford to be,’ and that I hadn’t experienced the hard knocks that she had, so to speak.”

Because Ryan was the wealthier one in the relationship, when they eventually moved in together, his girlfriend felt he should contribute more per month to their apartment. He told me he was happy to do it, but over time her contributions became smaller and smaller, and Ryan assumed more of their overall expenses. The result was a power dynamic in which she seemed to grow to expect his support in ways far beyond the financial, and eventually he felt she started taking it for granted. “By the time we broke up, I’d been playing Daddy Warbucks for so long that she had developed this totally hypocritical sense of entitlement. During the split, she felt like I owed her basically everything—things I’d bought, and the apartment I’d been paying for, which made the separation far more confusing and bitter.”

It’s no longer considered unusual to marry someone outside of your ethnic or religious group, or from a different part of the country than you. But new research shows that, in recent years, it’s become increasingly likely that you will marry someone with a similar level of education, which often translates into a similar income. On the plus side, this tendency (known as “assortative mating”) reflects the fact that there are far more educated, high-flying women in the world. But the trend is also increasing the country’s income inequality—for example, two married doctors are far richer than two spouses who make minimum wage.

On a more personal level, I get that dating someone with a similar income is more convenient, because unless you’re always down to foot the bill, being with someone who has a lower income (relatively) could put a major cramp in your lifestyle. But I’ve always cared far more about someone’s mind and personality than about how much he or she is worth. I’ve dated very rich men—it’s New York, they’re everywhere—and was aware that, if things got serious, my lifestyle could improve dramatically. But I could never bring myself to be with someone I didn’t truly love, even if it meant frequent trips to Europe and Bergdorf’s. And while I don’t believe it’s anti-feminist for a guy to pick up the check, I would also be very uncomfortable if I were supported by a partner, because I couldn’t help feeling like I constantly owed them something.

Some women are totally fine with that dynamic, as Ryan knows all too well. A year after his bitter breakup, he began dating a girl from a wealthier family than his own. This girl stood by the old-world idea that the man should always pay, but she also had expensive taste. “At the beginning of the relationship, she put on this whole ‘penthouse princess’ routine, and would ask me about my plans to get rich in the future,” Ryan said. “But it seemed playful, almost like an act.” Over time, her concern became increasingly serious. “She’d say things like, ‘Our children will be able to go to private schools, won’t they?’ Now, maybe this is vain, but I always imagined my children would be brilliant no matter what. I’ll be sitting by their bedsides reading them Wordsworth before they’re verbal—clearly they’re going to be geniuses. But she wanted to make sure they could get into Dalton, and was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to afford it.” Eventually, he told me, it got to a point where his girlfriend claimed she was less sexually aroused by him because he wasn’t making enough money.

Ultimately, Ryan knew that marrying her would have meant a step up in his standard of living, but a step down in his quality of life. “I would have entered a new social sphere, but more work and expenses would have meant less free time and less security, and that didn’t seem worth it to me,” he admitted. “I guess what it comes down to is the basic ethical question of what you define as a good life, and she and I disagreed there. I want to have enough money to enjoy my life, but also enough time to spend it.”

And that’s basically it. At the core, our financial arguments are often questions of values, or self-worth. It’s difficult to be in a healthy relationship when you resent something your partner has—money, success, beauty, whatever. And sure, differences in income can sometimes magnify that. But unlike anger, resentment is generally a defense of our ego—it causes us to oversimplify things, and prevents us from seeing our partner’s point of view clearly. In hindsight, the professional insecurity I felt as a Sriracha slave was a major factor in why I came to see my ex-boyfriend as such an annoying little rich boy.

My best relationships were with people who took pleasure in the same things I did—who agreed that traveling was worth splurging on, and that it’s better to spend too much at a restaurant with romantic ambiance than $10 on noodles under fluorescent lights. Because even if you both have a ton of money, it’s of no use if you can’t agree on how to spend it. Money can be an intermediary between you and what you find important in the world, an expression of values and what you define as “the good life.” Finding someone who shares your definition is (almost) priceless.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair: Casey Geren; Makeup: Yumi

The post Breathless: The Biggest Taboo in Relationships Isn’t Sex—It’s Money appeared first on Vogue.

The other day, at a Fashion Week party, my friend Alan and I stood against a wall, scanning the room for hot people, as you do. “It’s weird,” he said contemplatively, staring into a sea of models. “Lately, in order to want to sleep with someone, I actually have to like them as a person.” He said this as if it were a mind-blowing revelation. I told him that, at 31, the realization was probably a bit overdue, but I knew what he meant: As one gets older, it becomes harder and harder to be attracted to someone simply because of the way they look. Is it because, with age, we care more about a relationship’s potential longevity, rather than just instant sexual gratification? Or perhaps we become more acutely aware of the impermanence of beauty after experiencing our own signs of aging? Or, more simply, have we just realized that dating freakishly beautiful people isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

A female friend once told me, “It’s always best to date attractive men, but not so attractive that everyone’s constantly trying to jump on their dick, because that’s just stressful.” The sentiment actually made a lot of sense to me. While some people clearly feel proud to have a hottie on their arm, others are more comfortable having the upper hand in the beauty department. If you’ve ever had someone look at you during sex with this completely euphoric expression, like, “I can’t believe I get to do this with you,” you understand that “dating down” in terms of attractiveness can be a confidence boost in its own right. And while I’m drawn to extremely beautiful people, I more often want to just stare at them or hang an oil painting of them on my wall rather than lie on top of them nude. But I’ve also wondered if, deep down, I’m just intimidated by the idea of dating someone hotter than me.

My friend Millie Brown, a performance artist widely known as the “vomit artist,” has a lot of experience with dating freakishly attractive men. Millie and I lived together during our early and mid-twenties, and at the time, it felt like every other week she had a new model boyfriend. “It wasn’t that I was specifically attracted to models,” Millie clarified recently. “It just so happened that, about five or six years ago, what was fashionable in terms of male models were thin, tattooed punk boys who looked like they’d just been plucked from a skate park, and that’s what I was into. Of course I’m attracted to beauty,” she concluded, “but so is everyone else.”

It’s true: It’s human nature to want to kiss and touch and penetrate beautiful people. Most of us, at some point in our lives, have hung posters of models and movie stars on our bedroom walls. And no matter how much I love my partner, I still occasionally masturbate to Tony Ward. But according to Millie, the reality of being romantically involved with the world’s most desired has its downsides.

“What’s annoying is that when you’re with a really hot guy, other girls have no qualms about coming up and hitting on him right in front of you,” she said. “Or girls will turn and blatantly stare at your boyfriend in the street. At certain times that can be a confidence boost, but it’s hard to deal with on a daily basis, especially when you don’t 100 percent trust the person you’re dating.” And this doesn’t just go for models, Millie says, but hot people in general. “When you have so many people throwing themselves at you, you’re spoiled for choice, so there’s less incentive to be faithful. Not to mention that people get away with so much more when they’re attractive.”

And that’s not just true of relationships; it’s true of life in general. It’s a widely documented psychological phenomenon that good-looking people are perceived by others as being better people overall—as being nicer, more intelligent, better at their jobs, and yes, better to date. And, according to economist Daniel S. Hamermesh, author of Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful, there are also many economic benefits to looking good, from higher wages at work to getting better deals on loans.

But according to Millie, all of this unearned praise and attention can present problems in relationships. “When you’re a model, or just extremely good-looking, people are constantly telling you that you’re beautiful, but those people usually want something from you,” she told me. “You’re surrounded by ingenuine people, and therefore lack the knowledge of how to form good, honest relationships.” Because of all the attention, she said, beautiful people often become obsessed with how other people perceive them, which can ultimately lead to a pronounced insecurity. “At one point I felt like I was dating a teenage girl,” she said. “The guy I was dating would endlessly post half-naked selfies, and then wait around to see how many people liked them. He just constantly needed validation.”

Personally, the people I’ve been most attracted to—not the superficial kind of attraction we feel to a pretty person on a page, but a deep, chemical attraction—have not been conventionally beautiful. The attraction felt almost indefinable, relying on everything from their looks and style to their mind and profession, to the smell of their skin and the sound of their voice. Deep attraction is, of course, a multisensory experience. But, as un-shallow as I have congratulated myself for being on many occasions, I will admit that there have been times when someone’s looks overwhelmed any need for a deeper compatibility.

Case in point: A couple years ago, I dated a writer whose work I really admired—he was kind and intelligent, we got along wonderfully, and the sex was good, too. However, he was bald and a little shorter than me, and ultimately just not that hot. It never bothered me when we were alone, but as things got more serious, I began to feel nervous about introducing him to my friends. I hated myself for having such superficial impulses, but I couldn’t help it: I want to be able to show my partners off to the world for both what they do and how they look. And I expect the same from my friends. In the past, when a friend has introduced me to a new partner who’s superhot, but clearly an idiot, I’ve judged them for it. On the other hand, whenever a girlfriend of mine starts dating a middling, out-of-shape guy, all I can think is: This isn’t feminism.

Popular culture tells us that it’s normal for average-looking or even unattractive men to date beautiful women, as long as the men are successful—the trollish tycoon with the supermodel wife is a classic archetype—but that the reverse is somehow remarkable. In sociology, this is called the “beauty-status exchange”—an attractive person pairs with a wealthy or powerful person, and both win. And usually, this exchange is heavily gendered.

But according to new research by University of Notre Dame sociologist Elizabeth McClintock, despite outliers like Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall, in the practical world, this very rarely happens. The study, “Beauty and Status: The Illusion of Exchange in Partner Selection?,” finds that people are ultimately looking for compatibility and companionship; that men and women are actually equally shallow in terms of beauty and status. Well-educated people want to date other well-educated people, and the beautiful are drawn to their beautiful counterparts. In other words, before we make claims that women use their beauty to “marry up” in terms of economic status, we have to take into account our country’s 70-percent wage gap, according to McClintock. Women tend to marry men who make more money than them, whether they’re beautiful or not.

As for Millie, after years of dating models, she eventually had to cut herself off. “When I was younger, I could see a photograph of a guy and fall in love with him,” she said. “But now, even when I find someone extremely attractive, I’m indifferent to act on it unless I’m also attracted to them intellectually and emotionally—they have to still be hot when they open their mouth, basically. As I get older, I naturally want to be with someone who can do more than look pretty in a picture.”

It makes sense. As we grow up and become more dynamic, intelligent people, we expect the same from our partners. That’s not to say that beauty doesn’t matter—sexual attraction in a romantic relationship is clearly vital. But if a superficial quality is the focal point of your relationship, or the source of what binds, that’s a bad sign. If I’m ever feeling particularly superficial, I just think of this quote from Andy Warhol, which pretty perfectly sums up my idea of beauty: “I really don’t care that much about ‘Beauties.’ What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love. . . . Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something. Which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that I don’t know what it is they’re being. It’s more fun to be with people who are doing things.”

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair: Casey Geren; Makeup: Yumi

The post Breathless: The Pitfalls of Dating the Freakishly Attractive appeared first on Vogue.

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It now seems ridiculous, but I will admit that, in the past, I’ve actually wondered if I was above heartache. I relished the idea that I might be vaguely sociopathic, because at 28, I had yet to feel deep loss or sadness in connection to a romantic relationship in the way that so many of my friends had. When friends of mine wouldn’t shut up about their breakups, I avoided them. Rather than feeling anything like empathy, I always had a pragmatic reaction. A breakup is simply an opportunity to upgrade and an excuse to be a slut for a while. You’re allowed one month tops to be sad, during which you get wasted and fuck a bunch of other people, and then a few months down the line you start looking for Mr. or Ms. Better-Than-the-Last. In retrospect, it wasn’t that I was being insensitive, but rather that I just couldn’t relate.

Now that I’m on the other side, I’m desperately clinging to anyone who can identify with what I’m feeling, or who will at least entertain me while I word-vomit Sylvia Plath–isms. I’m a broken record. And while I appreciate my friends for being there for me, none of them has actually made me feel any better. Everyone essentially says the same thing: “Oh, yeah, breakups are the worst. It will be a year before you’re fully back to normal.” It’s like: Thanks, guys. . . .

Something else I never fully grasped before is that, after being dumped, your ego goes on hiatus and you become a more shameless, more embarrassing version of yourself. For instance, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m now someone who sobs at random times in public places. The man who works behind the counter at my local Turkish deli knows far more about my breakup than is necessary. I often wake up hungover in the afternoons to find that I’ve sent my ex a series of manic texts, like: “I know I’ve hurt you in the past, but from now on I just want to buy furniture together at Crate & Barrel!!!” (In all caps, no less.)

A couple weeks ago, while at JFK, waiting to board the red-eye to London, I found myself crying into my McFlurry, confiding in a nearby Swedish woman who 100 percent did not care about my emotional trauma but who had kindly come over to ask if I was OK, unaware of the landslide of oversharing the question would unleash. Part of the desire to endlessly discuss a breakup is the delusional belief that you can talk your way out of it. That if your argument is good enough, you can win the case. That you can rationalize your ego back to life.

Someone who has been particularly helpful to me these past couple’ months is a friend I’ll call Kate, who, on the evening that the breakup went down, said something I found really valuable: “You are a machine now. You are going to have to be a robot for a while. But eventually, your humanity will start to trickle back, and you will start over.” She slept over at my apartment that night, and when I woke up, I found she had written out a list of the things I had to do that first day: “Brush your teeth; eat something; take a shower; call me.” I did it all, robotically. I did not feel like myself, but rather someone acting like myself. There are still moments when I feel this way.

There is a rulebook of things you are supposed to do after a breakup to help distract yourself, heal, and move on. You’re supposed to immerse yourself in work, and to use your sadness as a creative force. You’re supposed to have mindless hot sex with randoms, or become preoccupied with a passionate rebound. You’re supposed to eat healthfully and exercise. But I’m pretty sure whoever established these rules had never been dumped, because when you’re really low, these things seem near impossible. I can barely form a cohesive thought, which means working is basically impossible. I doubt any sane person would want to have sex with me, given the state that I’m in. The sad truth is, the only way to get over the pain of a breakup is time. You can’t expedite the process.

A couple of weeks after the breakup, Kate emailed me a link to an article about how being dumped by someone actually does change you, neurologically. The article, which compared brain scans of people recovering from recent breakups to those of people overcoming a cocaine addiction, found that both engage in the same neural circuitry. In a weird way, knowing this was comforting, because it was so objective. And it made me realize that, after a breakup, we have the choice to “get clean”—to cut all contact and try to move on. The alternative? We can keep feeding our addiction with texts, breakup sex, and visits to their Facebook page, stoking the craving and signing ourselves up to be dragged along further for an even more painful ride. And yet it’s so tempting to be dragged, to linger in dark denial, because it’s easier than admitting to ourselves that it’s really over, that it can’t be fixed.

One of the things that’s surprised me most about this breakup: what I miss. I don’t so much miss the big, obvious things that one would assume would be the hardest to go without: sex, sharing a bed, nights out at the movies. Instead, I obsess over the stupidest, most seemingly insignificant moments. I miss walking to the crappy deli near her house to get egg wraps, then eating them on her living room couch in our underwear, passing back and forth a bottle of Sriracha. I miss the gross organic toothpaste in her bathroom that I would always complain about. I miss her endless array of colorful socks.

I understand that romantic relationships are not the be-all and end-all of happiness, and that eventually, with time, I will be over this breakup and feel normal and happy again. And even now, part of me is saying, “You are a single woman in her 20s in New York—go have fun, you dummy!” But I have also learned over the years that I am just a relationship person, as cheesy as that might sound. After every breakup I’ve told myself, “O.K., now I’m going to be single—I’m just going to do me.” Partly because I believed that, as a modern, independent “Lean In” feminist, I should be able to love myself and be happy alone. But I actually think that’s bullshit. I actually think that I’m a better, happier, more productive person when I’m in a loving, supportive relationship, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that.

One of the hardest things to get over, for me, has been accepting the fact that the breakup was largely my fault. There are aspects of being in relationships that I’m not the greatest at: monogamy isn’t easy for me; when I’m drunk, I sometimes neglect to answer my phone for an entire evening; during fights I say hurtful things that I don’t mean. I suppose these are all pretty standard flaws, but during a breakup you can’t help but relive every mistake you made along the way and wonder whether, if you’d just done one tiny thing differently, it could have all worked out. When someone loves you—and especially when you have the upper hand in the relationship, as I did for most of it—it becomes far too easy to take that love for granted. I think I got to a delusional point where I thought I could make mistake after mistake and that she would never leave me, because, “Duh, it’s me.” Shockingly, this was not the case.

I get that ultimately, breakups are not always “bad.” Sometimes, even if it hurts, ending a relationship can be a mature and healthy decision. In the past, some breakups have felt like relief, or even something close to joy. One of the hardest things about being dumped is realizing that the person who dumped you probably isn’t suffering as badly as you are. In fact, they might be happier without you, and worse, there might be someone better for them out in the world. That’s really what hurts the most: the prospect that they were right to move on, when for you, they felt like the one.​

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair: Casey Geren; Makeup: Yumi

The post Breathless: I Was Dumped Two Months Ago, and I’m Still Heartbroken appeared first on Vogue.

I didn’t own a vibrator until I was twenty-five. Until then, I always had the same thought: Why waste money on a masturbation machine when my hand and showerhead are both free and perfectly capable? That was until one day when, against my will, vibrators started showing up at my apartment. And it wasn’t just vibrators—there were all sorts of complicated and seemingly dangerous devices, sent by sex-toy companies that wanted me to write about their various gadgets. There was the sci-fi vibrator that I nicknamed “ET,” which involved attaching vibrating pads to your fingertips and strapping a battery pack around your wrist. There was the horsetail butt plug (for “pony play,” obviously). There was the particularly terrifying package from a company that specialized in toys modeled after the genitalia of fantasy creatures; for example, a giant sea dragon–penis dildo and a penetrable, scaly dragoness vagina. And then there was the time a large box of various lubricants showed up, which is actually quite an awkward thing to store in a tiny New York apartment. “The broom? Oh, that’s in the living room closet, right behind my lifetime supply of lube.”

In our post–Fifty Shades world, where sex-toy parties have replaced tupperware parties and even my devout Catholic mother knows what a “safe word” is, the idea of incorporating props or gadgets into your sex life is becoming less and less taboo. Even Walmart sells sex toys now. And if anything, all the unsolicited sexual paraphernalia I’ve received has opened my eyes to the vastness of the sex-toy menu. It has also taught me that (good) vibrators can be a godsend, especially when you’re too lazy to even move your finger and just want to lay a machine on your crotch and then pass out. But for as mainstream as sex toys have become, the reality of introducing them into sex with a partner can sometimes be a difficult or awkward affair.

From my experience—and this seems to be the general consensus—men are less comfortable using sex toys than women, during both sex and masturbation. In the past, when I’ve suggested incorporating my vibrator into sex with guys, a few have been into it, but most seemed weirded out or threatened. One guy even looked at me condescendingly and asked, “You actually need that?” in a way that suggested I wasn’t in touch enough with my body to have an orgasm without the assistance of a robot.

Recently, I brought this issue up with June Tomaso-Wood, a psychotherapist and sex therapist. June told me, “It’s true, some men do find it intimidating or emasculating when their partner wants to incorporate a device into their sexual play. Men–especially young men—want to be viewed as virile, self-confident, and capable of satisfying a woman in bed. They feel their penis should be the be-all and end-all of your sexual life. So when you suggest using your vibrator, your boyfriend might be thinking, ‘Why, am I not enough?’ But this is likely because of a lack of sex education and knowledge about how these sexual tools could be beneficial for both sexes.”

If this is the case, how do we convince our male partners to feel the same love for our vibrators that we do? “You just have to explain to your partner that the toy isn’t a threat or a replacement, but rather an added bonus,” June advises. “A vibrator can stimulate all of your 8,000 nerve endings very quickly, which gets you very wet and engorged with blood down there—this tightens your vaginas muscles, which makes sex feel better for the guy, and it increases your chances of having a vaginal orgasm. The penis just can’t do it all—it can’t stimulate the woman on the outside. But of course, mention that nothing can ever replace the penis, or the closeness of being with a partner. Be confident and say, ‘Let’s be playful and bring this toy to bed tonight, and let me show you how exciting this can be for both of us.’”

For some reason, within the LGBTQ community, sex toys don’t seem to be as taboo of an issue. Almost every lesbian I know keeps a full box of equipment in her room—it’s a thing. Vibrators, dildos, strap-ons, restraints, coconut oil (it’s better than lube, and it fights yeast infections!), butt plugs: Lesbians can’t get enough of this stuff. It was a girl who first taught me the euphoric intensity of coming with a butt plug in. But it wasn’t until I began dating my ex-girlfriend, two years ago, that I developed my truly deep appreciation for sex toys, but for a somewhat different reason. . . .

When she and I got together, the idea that I could and should come every time we had sex, at least once, was crazy to me. Arriving as I had from the heterosexual world, this was like sexual culture shock. Of course, the new level of sexual pleasure was really exciting, but it also introduced some pressure—when you have to come, or else your partner will be disappointed, it can be easy to stress yourself out or get too in-your-own-head about it. Or at least that’s what happened to me, and it meant that at the beginning of our relationship, it sometimes took me ages to come. Then one day my girlfriend suggested I use a vibrator, which I’d never used during partner sex before. Incorporating the toy immediately took the pressure off and allowed me to focus more on our interaction rather than obsessing about how close I was to orgasm. It wasn’t long before I was getting fucked with a strap-on and a ball gag in my mouth, vibrator in hand.

June often recommends sex toys to her patients for just this reason. “I tell a lot of people to use sex toys, because they’re really good for people who have anticipatory anxiety about sex,” she told me. “From your teens into your thirties, this generally isn’t a problem, but as you get older, some people begin to feel insecurity because they don’t know if they will perform well. A lot of men lose their erections, sex drive can decrease, and it can be more difficult to reach climax, so I promote toys as a buffer, because they help people to stay grounded in the moment, and focused on the playfulness and the intense stimulation they provide, which automatically decreases anticipatory anxiety.” Specifically, June told me, cock rings are great for helping men stay hard (they keep the blood in the genitals), and vibrators, as we learned, increase the chance of arousal and orgasm in women.

Though sex toys don’t have to be kinky, sometimes they are a good way to introduce light S&M or a bit of power play into your sex life. Things like blindfolds, whips, paddles, and restraints are fairly common, nonthreatening things to keep in your bedroom, and can be introduced to most new partners without much awkwardness or hesitation. More specialized toys—things like nipple clamps, leg spreaders, dog collars, adult diapers, etc.—might need more of a considered introduction. Or just ease your partner into it slowly; the cute pink handcuffs are OK for date one, but maybe wait until date three before you bust out the horse mask.

So now that we know how fun and beneficial toys can be, the question becomes what to buy. There’s a lot of crap out there. Often, when I get a sex toy in the mail, I’ll try it once before tossing it behind my bed, into what I’ve started referring to as the vibrator graveyard. Some are disturbingly loud, others awkwardly and cumbersomely large, others so powerful that they immediately numb my clit. I know Sex and the City made The Rabbit incredibly popular in the late nineties, but have you ever seen one? It looks like a torture device marketed toward six-year-old girls and sounds like a power blender. I take my masturbation very seriously, and I can’t seriously masturbate with something that looks like that.

Fortunately the sex-toy market has exploded in recent years, and manufacturers seem to be catching onto the fact that not all women want to masturbate with jackhammers (especially when we have roommates!). There’s a Japanese brand called Tenga that I particularly like—they make minimalist, small, quiet vibrators that feel almost like human skin. They also make male masturbation toys, which I can’t vouch for but that I can say come in cool, Keith Haring print cases. And there are a bunch of other companies out there—from Jimmyjane to We-Vibe—that make well-designed products with the understanding that toys should be a pleasurable background element of your sexual interaction, not an obnoxious distraction.

These days, I never leave home without my pocket vibrator and a travel-size bottle of lube. Because you never know when you’re going to run into a hot stranger, or simply find yourself in a casual masturbation emergency.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair: Casey Geren; Makeup: Yumi

The post Breathless: Sex Toys Are the New Couples Therapy appeared first on Vogue.

There are many stages of heartbreak. Three months deep into my break-up, I have experienced almost all of them. First there’s shell shock, followed by denial, and then some combination of paralysis, anger, and loneliness. Then there’s this period where you just feel numb and find yourself staring at inanimate objects, having really cliché, intro-to-philosophy-type thoughts like, “What is happiness, anyway?” Eventually, after you’ve regained at least some of your dignity, you enter the classic “I’ll show them!” phase. This is when your brain tries to trick your heart into thinking that you’ve moved on, and you suddenly have tons of energy for things you’ve never cared about before, like alphabetizing your bookshelves and figuring out what the best food podcasts are, even though you never cook and literally don’t own a single pan. This is also the phase when you begin the dreaded coital dance known as dating.

For me, this phase began with writing “living well is the best revenge” on a Post-it, sticking it to the wall beside my bed, then staring at it for twenty minutes before deciding to take a nap. When I woke up from that nap, I downloaded Tinder.

“How bad could it be?” I thought. Funnily enough, despite Tinder’s reputation as a hook-up app, most people don’t want to meet soon after matching, but rather engage in hours of meaningless texting—about the latest trendy food hybrid, about how Brooklyn is so expensive—which is something I can’t stand doing with friends, let alone strangers. But eventually, I matched with a handsome enough 30-something who was OK with skipping the small talk. But an hour later, walking into the specified bar in the West Village, I immediately understood why people take the time to screen each other via text. Tinder guy turned out to be two of my worst fears combined: a short actor.

As is common with short actors, this guy was very fond of himself, and within minutes he was playing aloud a recording of himself singing a song from his upcoming off-Broadway show. As I politely smiled and nodded along to the ballad—a duet!—blasting from his phone, I tried my best to conceal the actual shivers of terror running down my spine. Next, naturally, he asked me if I was into threesomes. Although he posed it less as a question and more as an offer, adding that he’d had a few threesomes in the past that were “OK or whatever,” but he’d be willing to have another if it’s what I wanted. I said it was very generous of him, and before I knew it, he was leading me into a nearby gay bar, where he suggested I “find a girl for a group sex,” despite the fact that 98 percent of the people in the bar were gay men. It was when he attempted to grind with me to a Lana Del Rey techno remix that I finally made my escape.

But it wasn’t a true escape, because in the following days and then weeks, Tinder guy’s texts were incessant, despite my complete lack of response. It was everything from, “Babe, how about that threesome?” to “Is your phone broken!?” to the complete non sequitur “I was on TV this week.” Finally, he asked if the reason I wasn’t responding was because I was too dumb to understand simple English.

Something I’ve learned over the years is that a lot of men have trouble dealing with rejection. Their brains literally go haywire, and they begin spewing out insults in a desperate attempt to rebuild their fragile egos. And this sad phenomenon has only been exasperated by online dating, which allows men access to countless more women who don’t want to have sex with them.

My very wise friend Ally once said: “The New York dating scene is a war zone. If you don’t watch out, your legs will get blown off and you’ll end up begging for money on the L train.” That might be a bit overdramatic but I understand the sentiment. Sometimes the idea of “getting out there” seems like torture, but you have to do it, because the alternative is a life of sitting home alone, eating bags of beef jerky while watching Mob Wives in your uncle’s hand-me-down sweatpants (something I’ve been doing regularly). After the Tinder fail, I watched Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, trying to will myself into the headspace of the film’s main character, who takes great pleasure in fucking strange men—something I, too, used to find sexy and exciting, before my ex-girlfriend tore out my heart and threw it in the trash along with my will to live and my problematically high sex drive.

A couple nights later, I went to a dinner party on the Upper East Side. I wore a slinky silk dress and intentionally went to the party alone, to force myself to mingle. I ended up in a long conversation with an older, seemingly early-50s cardiologist. He was wearing high-waisted khakis and had overgrown nose hairs, but he was really sweet, and was becoming funnier with every sip of punch I took. Primed by my screening of Nympho, I was eager for an atypical experience, so I agreed to go back to his apartment.

I was looking for an experience, but this was the wrong one. Once the doctor took his clothes off, he looked way older than 50—he may have been pushing 60. The thing about older men is, they rarely look good. Especially when they’re naked. When women gain a few pounds, they just become more pillowy and fun to cuddle. But men gain weight in all the wrong places; they look like pregnant trolls. Not to mention that once they hit 30, almost all of them have back hair. To make the situation worse, the doctor then took out a cock ring from his bedside table, which he informed me was necessary for him to stay hard. I’m pretty sure I’ve never felt more gay than while watching him fasten the leather strap around his un-manicured balls. When I recounted this story to my best friend over a PTSD brunch the next morning, she—ever the competitor—immediately informed me of the time she slept with an older guy who, after he came, had to put on a full-face oxygen mask “to keep him alive.” She never lets me win.

The reality is, it’s hard to find someone who you can imagine having sex with more than twice, who doesn’t make you want to kill yourself as soon as they start talking. But if you don’t want to be celibate, sometimes you have to lower your standards. This is generally when you find yourself in bed with a random French guy who only mentions that he’s married after you’ve had sex, right before he tells you that the crutches in his living room are for when he pretends to be disabled to skip lines at the airport.

I’m not trying to make a sweeping statement that modern dating is doomed, or to echo Carrie Bradshaw’s claim that dating in New York is somehow harder than in other places. (Although I will say that, despite the vastness of this city, I’m constantly perplexed by how difficult it is to meet someone who hasn’t already slept with someone I know.) I’ve met some really great people in these past months, too—a beautiful artist who looked like a young Richard Hell, a hot androgynous Ivy League girl who could talk about books and movies for hours. But the funny thing about heartbreak is, it doesn’t even matter who you meet, because no one stands a chance.

There’s a distinct difference between beginning to date after getting out of a bad relationship and forcing yourself to date after ending a healthy relationship that you wish you were still in. After I broke up with my verbally abusive ex-boyfriend, years ago, I fell in love with everyone who so much as held a door open for me. “Wow, you talked to me for three minutes on the subway without calling me stupid or fat? Of course I’ll have sex with you! In fact, why don’t you just move in?” But when you’re still in love with your ex, as I am now, all the new people you meet are stuck being compared not just with your ex, but with a romanticized version of your ex who is actually far better, smarter, and more attractive than they are in real life. It’s an unattainable standard. And you’re essentially a hypocrite: you’re completely emotionally unavailable, while also highly demanding of people’s attention. The combination is not so attractive.

Recently, I spent a couple of weeks dating a 32-year-old respected magazine editor who on paper is clearly an appropriate partner choice for me. I’m always reading articles about how we live in an age of “hook-up culture,” about how, for us millennials, courtship is dead. But in my experience, this is far from the case. And the editor took me on some pretty epic dates: there was dinner on a boat in the Hudson River, a beach weekend in the Hamptons, martinis at the Carlyle, and a series of other rendezvous that made me feel like I was living in a Woody Allen movie from the seventies. A couple times I actually found myself thinking, “Wow, you might be the perfect guy.” But ultimately, it only solidified how hung up on my ex I am, because even the perfect guy wasn’t good enough. He could be James Dean reincarnate with a Black Card and a completely hairless back, but it still wouldn’t feel right, because he’s not the person I’m in love with.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair: Casey Geren; Makeup: Yumi

The post Breathless: Dating Is Impossible when You’re Still in Love with Your Ex appeared first on Vogue.

In middle school, I used to jokingly refer to my best friend’s older sister as The Shapeshifter. She seemed to have zero autonomous personality, but rather adopted, drastically and transparently, the personalities of the various guys she dated. When she started dating the musician, she wore ripped concert T-shirts and cutoffs and bought a record player from Urban Outfitters (sans records). When she moved to California and began dating the surfer, she got the requisite spray tan and highlights and started carrying around a skateboard like a purse. But her chameleon tendencies went beyond the superficial. With the druggie boyfriend came the drug problem. Watching her casually live-tweet a stint in rehab, I wasn’t sympathetic. After all, I felt that I was secure enough in myself that I would never—could never—change drastically for someone else. But that was before I’d ever been in a serious relationship.

We’re told that “people don’t change,” and that we should never expect someone we’re dating to change for us. (“Once a cheater, always a cheater!”) At the same time, as girls, we’re constantly warned: “You should never change who you are or what you want for a man!” Both of those attitudes are pretty extreme. Sure, it might be a bit much to buy a whole new wardrobe with each new relationship, but it seems naive to think we’re not influenced by the people around us—especially by our partners. But does that have to be a bad thing?

I can be quite a negative person. My mom constantly tells the story of how, when I was a kid, I would always stare defiantly at the ground during fireworks shows, appalled that everyone could get so excited about them. So it was surprising when, two years ago, I began dating my girlfriend—she’s the kind of person who, while walking around the city, would stop to stare at things (random walls, broken windows, puddles) and then just sigh contently and comment on the obscure beauty of the world around us. This made me want to smash her head in. Like, “Why is this coffee shop making you so happy—this is the coffee shop from hell!” But soon, I began to admire that she rarely ever talked shit about people, and started to feel embarrassed about how flippantly critical I could be. Over time, I learned to chill out and enjoy things more, a consequence of being around someone who makes the best of any situation, and I’m really thankful for that.

I recently had a long Skype conversation with my friend Jenna Sauers about relationships and identity. Jenna’s a 28-year-old writer who, like me, is a self-proclaimed “relationship person.” Jenna told me, “I think what we look for in a partner, fundamentally, is someone who reinforces us, or who reflects an image we already have of ourselves. On some level, if you find yourself changing for a partner, it’s because that’s a change you want to make: you want to become the person who hosts dinner parties, or who knows a lot about craft beer, or who travels constantly, or whatever it may be. I don’t mean changing in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of way, but I think that, within reason, reacting to your partner’s preferences and values can simply be a healthy way of compromising within a relationship, assuming they do the same for you.”

That last part is the kicker: There needs to be a balance. But there was a time when Jenna didn’t get the balance quite right. In her early twenties, she began dating a guy who was older and very confident, both qualities that she liked. However, he could also be domineering and had especially strong opinions about what was worth her time, both professionally and socially, and what wasn’t. He even went as far as criticizing some of her interests. “The criticisms should have been a huge red flag,” she admits, “but I would make excuses for him.”

In a long relationship, Jenna said, sometimes you cede territory simply because you don’t want to fight. But then one day you wake up and realize you’ve given up more ground than you bargained for. “By the end of that relationship I didn’t have any sense of my own self worth, or my identity outside of it,” she said. “It’s a mistake I haven’t made again. I don’t think my ex was doing it intentionally, but he definitely enabled me to become a smaller and smaller person, and recovering from that was really tough. I had to fight to get to know myself again because, for so long, I’d just been someone’s girlfriend.”

Honestly, I know the feeling. As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to lose yourself in a relationship than I’d previously realized. Case in point: in my mid-twenties, I started dating a socially awkward, incredibly ambitious nerd who hated drinking. I, on the other hand, had spent the past handful of years living in various London squats, partying almost every night, and blacking out as a hobby. At first, the effect my boyfriend had on me was a positive one: He inspired me to work harder, I partied and drank less, and he taught me a lot about chemistry and pharmacology, which I’d previously known nothing about beyond my own recreational drug use.

But his positive influence reached a tipping point. He resented me for refusing to adapt to his teetotaling ways. He started refusing to have sex with me if I’d been drinking, even if I was just happily tipsy. He rarely socialized, so in order to spend time with him, I stopped going out and saw my own friends less and less. Bizarrely, he hated music, and somehow—my mind now having reached a Stockholm Syndrome–like point—I convinced myself that I also hated music. Right. He began nitpicking parts of my identity that he found antithetical to his own. My overuse of the word “like” was proof that I had a “disappointing, normal-girl blogger brain.” (LOL.) Not surprisingly, I became extremely conscious of my speech around him, which made it almost impossible to relax and be myself, whoever that was; I seemed to be losing track.

Since my fifteen-year-old self is getting a lot of play in this column, I might as well quote Chuck Palahniuk’s book Invisible Monsters: “Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” As depressing as that might be, I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement. In a way, we are always plagiarizing the people we respect, from their outfits to their morals. And if one of the people we respect most in the world is our partner, it’s not a surprise that we often feel the impulse to, you know, steal their personality wholesale.

It’s when a relationship ends, however, that things can get a bit disorienting. Jenna told me, “After almost every single breakup, I’ve had to go through a process of a re-identification and reassessment of my own core self. Because if you’re someone who adapts to the person you’re with, when you do find yourself back on your own, all of a sudden you have to adapt back. It can be kind of intoxicating to realize: I can cook whatever I want, I don’t have to pretend not to like that trashy TV show, and I don’t have to pretend to like jazz music!”

Most of us chose our partners because, on some level, we feel a connection with them, and usually that connection is a positive and inspiring thing. Maybe you’re both writers, and so you edit each other’s work and push each other to write more. Or maybe you’re both outdoorsy people, and so you go shopping for cargo pants together and walk around picking berries, or whatever those people do. But annoyingly, it’s also possible to connect with someone on your worst trait, like “OMG we both love heroin!” It feels so rare and exciting to meet someone who you truly strike a chord with, that it’s only natural to respond to it—even if it’s a bad chord. And sometimes, if you’re going through a particularly low period, it’s easy to find yourself (unconsciously or not) looking for someone who will enable you to be lazy or destructive. Misery loves company, and it’s a lot easier to avoid the guilt of getting drunk, or of spending the day in bed, when you have a partner in crime.

I might be stereotyping, but I think women can be especially vulnerable to adapting too much to the expectations of our partners, because we’re so damn overly accommodating. What we have to assess is: What am I losing by being part of a couple? Ideally, in each new relationship, you gain as many new good traits as you lose negative traits. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to make an effort to be more attractive to someone you like, as long as you don’t lose sight of yourself.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair: Casey Geren; Makeup: Yumi

The post Breathless: Are You Stealing Your Partner’s Personality? appeared first on Vogue.

The first time I heard the term twinning, I was in my early twenties. My new best friend at the time, whom I’ll call Ben, was a tall, deathly thin nerd with oversize glasses, shoulder-length bleached hair, and a penchant for faux fur—not a look you see every day, to say the least. So it was surprising when, one day, he showed up with a boyfriend who was almost his identical match, from his facial features to his fashion sense. Ben referred to their relationship as twinning, as if it were some established trend. I just chalked it up to Ben being weirdly self-obsessed—I mean, this was a guy who once told me he preferred to masturbate while looking in the mirror. Turns out I was wrong: Twinning is a thing.

People think pretty highly of themselves. It’s well established that most of us have deceptively inflated ideas about our own traits and abilities—known as “positive illusions”—which is part of what allows us to keep a somewhat optimistic outlook on life. Since we’re so vain, it’s not that hard to imagine people desiring a partner who shares their likeness. And new data from dating websites shows that, actually, that whole “opposites attract” thing we’ve been fed is mostly myth. While more than 80 percent of people think they want to date someone who complements rather than resembles themselves, according to one study, the data shows that people, particularly women, are much more likely to message someone of similar age, attractiveness, education, humor, creativity level, and so on. None of that is too surprising. But the narcissism doesn’t end there: Studies claim that we’re also more attracted to people who have a face that literally looks like our own. Gross.

Here’s how we know that. In a psychological study of incest taboos by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, researchers morphed images of their subjects’ faces to create faces of strangers. They then asked the unsuspecting subjects to rate the attractiveness of their own morphed face alongside other random faces. Sure enough, subjects preferred the faces that had their own features. That’s pretty surprising—I mean, aren’t we supposed to be genetically programmed to lust after people who look different from us, in order to produce stronger, healthier offspring, and, ya know, discourage inbreeding? Apparently not. Also, separate research has shown that when someone has a face that’s similar to our own, we tend to perceive him or her to be a better, more trustworthy person—which might have something to do with why we want them in our bed.

I’m now at an age where my peers have begun choosing partners to settle down with, and I’m often surprised by how many married couples I know look like siblings. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’ve always looked alike, or if they’re just one of those couples who have morphed into each other over time, like when Gwyneth and Brad got the same bad haircut. Personally, I feel like I’m never attracted to my doubles, but who knows. Maybe I’m deluding myself. Almost all of my boyfriends have had huge noses—I love a beak—and I’m also pretty well-endowed in that department. For my entire life, my mother has insisted that I stop dating men with noses like mine, “for the sake of the children.”

If you want further proof of the twinning phenomenon, it’s being documented regularly on the website Siblings or Dating?, which features siblings and couples who look like they might be committing incest. Better yet is the Tumblr Boyfriend Twin. Under the tagline, “Because what’s sexier than dating yourself?,” the site features gay couples who look almost identical. You really have to see it, because it’s even creepier than you would imagine—most of the couples look more alike than most biological twins, and even come complete with matching Ray-Bans, bald patches, identically shorn beards, and his-and-his American Apparel hoodies.

And to take this whole thing one step stranger, there was for a time a website solely dedicated to facilitating doppelgänger dating. Find Your FaceMate used facial recognition technology to match users based on shared facial features—no big deal. (The site is now defunct, leaving narcissists on the hunt for their look-alikes to their own devices.)​
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My instinct is to want to judge people for twinning, because it creeps me out. But relationships are hard enough, and trust is extremely difficult to build and maintain. If the fact that two people both have weak chins can help them to love and trust each other more, I wish them the best.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

On Sciortino: Michael Kors angora T-shirt, $695; michaelkors.com

Fashion Editor: Stella Greenspan; Hair: Andre Gunn; Makeup: Susie Sobol

The post Breathless: Are You Dating Your Doppelgänger? appeared first on Vogue.

In previous columns, I have written, in lengthy and pathetic detail, about the traumatic breakup I went through at the end of July. In addition to publishing multiple essays about the perils of heartbreak, I’ve also been privately campaigning to get my ex back: shameless, 2,000-word emails listing all the ways I’m prepared to change; sappy, “you complete me”-esque text messages; I even showed up at her apartment crying in a silk slip one evening, like a crazy woman from a Marcello Mastroianni movie. My ex rebuffed all my efforts with the same response: Though she still loved me, she just didn’t feel safe in our relationship. (The result, apparently, of my recurring pressures to open our relationship throughout our two years together—my bad?) By November, after four months of trying to negotiate with her, I was beginning to give up hope. But then I got an email: “I’m willing to try to work things out, under one condition: We have to begin couples therapy.”

I’ll start by saying that I realize this whole situation is embarrassing. Couples therapy just seems like one of those things other people do. Specifically, other people in their 50s, with two kids and a house, for whom separating would dismantle their entire lives. Lessa and I, on the other hand, began dating only two years ago, and we are in our 20s. The only property we’ve ever shared were the communal toothbrushes at our respective apartments. Many would argue that needing to see a therapist at this stage is a sign that we should just break up. I also understand that, by dragging ourselves back into a messy relationship we just spent months trying to get over, we risk suffering heartbreak all over again. But I’m lovesick and desperate, and therefore can’t be held accountable for my decisions.

I’ve always been kind of skeptical of therapy. I grew up in a conservative, traditional Italian Catholic family. Where I come from, when you’re sad, you get smacked in the face and told to cheer up. I can’t remember anyone in my family talking openly about their feelings—we barely talked at all, unless it concerned Jesus or sports. Needing to see a therapist was viewed as a sign of weakness. And although there were a couple of times during depressive periods of my life when I considered seeing a psychologist, I always ultimately decided against it, deeming it too self-indulgent. Of course, there are situations when therapy seems appropriate—after a serious loss or trauma, for example. But am I really going to pay a stranger thousands of dollars to listen to me whine about the stresses of my blogger life? Tragic.

And yet, here we are. When Lessa posed the idea of counseling, she said it was important to her that, going forward, there would be a continuous open dialogue about our relationship. She wanted to actually fix the things that weren’t working, rather than just falling back into the same pattern—e.g., me trying to wave my slut flag, and accidentally falling asleep at sex parties, while she stays home and calls me 30 times in a row. That sounded reasonable enough.

Our first session was six weeks ago. Somewhat worryingly, on the day of, my primary concern was what to wear. I wanted to make a good impression on the therapist by looking pretty, but also virtuous—ya know, “the good guy” in the relationship—and so I chose a white, crew-neck wool dress with gold buttons that I felt made me look particularly angelic. The therapist wasn’t exactly what I expected. Having been a fan of HBO’s In Treatment, the stock image of a therapist in my mind is of a dark and handsome, pensive, Gabriel Byrne–type with whom patients always feel a muted sexual tension. Our therapist (I’ll call her Kate), however, was a 60-something woman in white jeans and trendy, knee-high leather boots, smiling enthusiastically in her shabby-chic Upper East Side office. Peppy and progressive, she’s like the cool mom you always wished you had.

As a first step, both Lessa and I were asked to explain why we were in couples therapy. Surprisingly, Kate did not think “Because she made me do it” was either a funny or a valid response. Lessa, on the other hand, has been in therapy since she was young (typical Jew), and is well-versed in this sort of thing. She explained that we have pretty serious trust and jealousy issues, many of which are left over from our year in a poorly managed open relationship. And the fact that we both cheated once didn’t help. Also, Lessa seems to think I have an “anger problem” (I prefer to think of myself as “passionate”), and that I need to learn to communicate my feelings rather than be an emotional cavewoman (my parents’ fault).

Jealousy sucks. It’s stressful and unattractive, and once it gets hold of you, it can be hard to control. Talking about your feelings is difficult enough, but the sensitive subjects of trust and jealousy are two of the hardest to broach. Usually, when I feel upset or insecure in a relationship, my default reaction is to retaliate in order to make the other person feel as bad as I do. It’s just way easier to be a bitch than it is to admit, “It makes me feel insecure when you talk to your ex.” Retribution is more appealing than fixing the problem, because the latter usually entails making yourself vulnerable. And thanks to my ego, I’ve never been very comfortable with vulnerability. Lessa’s reaction to a problem, meanwhile, has always been to run away—hence her eventual decision to break up. Before we split, we were having the same stupid fight over and over again. Eventually, I’d go into vengeful bitch mode, and she’d walk out. Nothing ever got solved.

We’re not the only couple who does this. As Kate told us, partners often fight in non-constructive ways. We defend ourselves by attacking the other person: “Sure, I cheated, but you did it first, but you hurt me more.” There’s always a “but you” that can substitute for actually trying to understand or empathize with the other person’s argument. In therapy, however, we’re forced to listen. At first, the exercises seemed really juvenile: “Karley, do you understand how Lessa is feeling? No, but do you really, really understand?” It was questions like these that left me thinking less about the conversation and more about whether my facial expression was believably introspective enough. But eventually, slowly, some of what Lessa was saying started to sink in.

There was one lightbulb moment. Last session, Lessa told me, “When you do that thing where you disappear and don’t answer your phone for an entire evening—that really upsets me. Maybe not everyone would be upset by that, and maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal, but that’s a sore spot for me, and if you’re going to date me, we have to compromise.” This triggered a minor epiphany. I was reminded of an ex-boyfriend I had who would always try to argue me out of my feelings. He’d say, “You can’t be upset about this, it’s irrational!” And I’d be like, “Well, obviously I can be upset, because I am.” It’s not very considerate or useful to argue that someone’s personal experiences are “wrong.” Feelings are subjective, and not always logical. And strangely, our partners aren’t just empty shells that we get to have sex and brunch with. They’re actually real people with feelings and needs, and even though their feelings and needs might be different than our own, they’re still valid.

So far, what I think is most effective about couples therapy is the simple act of talking about your problems at a moment when you’re not fighting. Usually, the only time couples discuss their issues is in the heat of an argument—i.e., when you’re in crisis mode, stressed out, hurt, angry, and drunk. It’s rare that you’d interrupt a nice dinner to say, “Hey, let’s talk through our relationship problems in a constructive manner!” As if.

Now five sessions deep, she and I are doing pretty well. We still fight, but as silly as it may sound, we’re learning to fight better. Now, when we argue, rather than me just saying bitchy things to hurt her feelings, or her slamming a door in my face, we actually try to understand where the other is coming from—a fascinating idea! The fights have more of a resolution. And though at first I was like, “Are we really going to pay this person $150 an hour just so she can tell us we need to communicate?” in the end, what therapy has really done is given us the tools to communicate more effectively, and less like cavewomen.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair and Makeup: Courtney Perkins

The post Breathless: Can Couples Therapy Make Me Less of an Emotional Cavewoman? appeared first on Vogue.

1. Kissing is the best predictor of sexual prowess.

Kissing is important—it’s the gateway drug to sex—which is why I’m always amazed that some adults can be so bad at it. Like, how have you survived this far in life without learning this vital skill? As a general rule, your tongue shouldn’t already be out of your mouth before making contact with the other person’s face. No one wants to be facially penetrated by your erect lizard tongue. Start slow and ease into it. However, I’ve confirmed this year that when someone’s a bad kisser, it’s at least a sign that they’re also probably bad in bed, and this way you know who not to waste your time with.

2. Being in love is literally like being high on cocaine.

People often compare falling in love to being high, and most of us know that when you love someone intensely, it can feel almost like you’re addicted to them. Well, those are more than just poetic notions, according to my new favorite love guru, the famous biological anthropologist and relationship researcher Dr. Helen Fisher. Dr. Fisher is at the forefront of research on the brain chemistry of love. Her experiments, which put people who were madly in love in brain scanners and then showed them photographs of their sweethearts, found that the same parts of the brain are activated when we fall in love as when we take cocaine. So if you’re alone and feeling lonely this holiday season, don’t fret, just smoke some crack.

3. Be wary of biting people you’re not officially dating.

As one Girls actor recently told me, “If you’re not the girl’s primary partner, don’t bite her—even if she asks.” That’s an important tip. He, unfortunately, learned the hard way that marking territory that isn’t yours can lead to trouble for everyone involved.

4. Good sex can be taught, but good dominance and submission is innate.

It’s not that hard to teach a partner how to get you off—especially if he or she is eager to learn. It’s pretty routine to explain how you like to be touched, or your preferences on speed and pressure, or to learn the type of dirty talk that your partner most enjoys. Good D/s, however, is a different story. Being sexually dominated just doesn’t have the same effect when you have to coach your lover through the process. The ability to control and command authority is a personal trait, not a behavior, and therefore not so easily mimicked—and the same goes for the will and desire to sexually submit. When you find someone who perfectly fits into your preferred power dynamic, you know you’ve got a keeper.

5. Most men look like shit.

As I approach 30, I’ve noticed some changes in my peers—specifically the men. I’m constantly amazed now when looking around the room at parties—the women are beautiful, well-dressed, and fit, and the men are hideous. I don’t feel bad for saying that. Women face so much pressure when it comes to aging, when really, with a little bit of effort, most women can keep their shit together at least until menopause, and often after that. Men, on the other hand, have a steep decline in their thirties. They start balding, they get bellies, and they react to these unpleasant physical changes in the strangest ways—e.g., they start wearing “fashion” sweatpants or they grow unruly beards. It’s like, don’t you realize what that makes you look like? Everybody knows that, in a movie, when a character starts wearing sweatpants or grows an unruly beard, it means either his life is falling apart or he’s a serial killer. Of course, some men care enough to hold it together, and some can look dignified into their fifties and sixties. And there’s always the George Clooney types who somehow stay hot forever. But sadly, most of my male peers look like crap now.

6. It’s easier to get an STI as a woman than a man.

Ugh, having a vagina is so stressful! Periods, UTIs, the endless battle to balance your stupid pH, extortionately priced vaginal antifungal creams . . . and now this. This is one of those things we all should know, but many of us don’t (myself included—until recently). Because of our anatomy—the thin walls of our vagina, combined with the fact that it’s easy for bacteria to grow in there—girls are more likely to get an STI from an infected guy than a guy is to get one from an infected girl. So girls, don’t let him persuade you not to use a condom, because the risk is higher for you.

7. Sluts in movies always get punished . . . or die.

Have you ever noticed that in, like, every horror movie ever made, the slutty girl is always the first to get stabbed or eaten by zombies? Well, that’s not a coincidence. The “punished slut” narrative is ubiquitous across film, TV, and literature—there are endless examples, from The Scarlet Letter to Halloween to Nymphomaniac. Something awful has to happen to a promiscuous girl—whether she dies in the end, or ends up miserable and alone—because that’s the narrative that our sex-negative society is comfortable with. The promiscuous woman is painted as evil, inconsequential, or disposable. Tina Fey really hit the nail on the head in Mean Girls, when the high school sex-ed teacher tells his young female students: “Don’t have sex. Cause you will get pregnant . . . and die.” Funny, yet eerily poignant.

8. Don’t think the rules don’t apply to you.

I hate the idea of “rules” when it comes to sex and dating. This isn’t physics; there’s no solvable equation that can teach us the right or wrong way to date or have sex. (I’ve always found it ridiculous when someone claims to be a “sexpert.”) However . . . despite the subjectivity of love, there are some universally recognized red flags and general things to look out for when dating—e.g., the person you’re sleeping with is married, or has a drug problem, or you show up at his apartment for the first time and there’s a layer of trimmed beard hairs covering his sink and stains all over his sheets. We all know what these signs mean. Don’t act like, just because it’s you, this time it’s going to be different.

9. We’re moving toward marriage equality, in more ways than one.

It’s an exciting time as more and more parts of the world are allowing same-sex couples to marry. But as of late, the term marriage equality has taken on yet another meaning. I recently read Rebecca Solnit’s hysterically funny and enlightening collection of essays Men Explain Things to Me. She writes that, while marriage was never between equals in the past, now marriage equality is a threat to inequality. “When people of the same gender can marry each other,” she said in an interview, “it says that people can be equals within marriage, and that liberates all of us.”

And it’s true. As the emotional, social, and financial equality of the sexes becomes a reality, this change is having a huge impact on sex, romance, and family life. In Dr. Helen Fisher’s TED talk, “Why We Love, Why We Cheat,” she says that we’re returning to an ancient form of marriage equality. “The 21st century is going to be the century of what they call the ‘symmetrical marriage,’ or the ‘pure marriage,’ or the ‘companionate marriage.’ This is a marriage between equals, moving forward to a pattern that is highly compatible with the ancient human spirit.”

10. Sometimes your own idea of what love looks like prevents you from seeing love happening right in front of you.

People express love in different ways. Some buy flowers, some invite you on nature walks, and some invite you to put things in their butt. But sometimes a partner’s romantic gestures can get lost in translation simply because they’re not in sync with your own specific image of romance. It’s like earlier this year, when my girlfriend made a cake, and I was like, “Eww, get that fattening gluten nightmare away from me.” It was only later, when she explained that she made the cake for us to share, hoping to have a romantic evening in together, that I was like, “Oohhh . . . snap.” One of the best pieces of dating advice I got this year was: “You have to let your partner love you the way they love you, not the way you want to be loved.”

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

On Sciortino: Valentino dot wool sweater, $1,990; luisaviaroma.com

Fashion Editor: Stella Greenspan; Hair: Andre Gunn; Makeup: Susie Sobol

The post Breathless: 10 Things I Learned About Sex and Love in 2014 appeared first on Vogue.

I lost my virginity at 16, but I didn’t come during sex until I was 22. That’s normal, right? No?

I recently confessed this to a friend, and she responded by putting her hand on my knee and gasping, “Oh, my God, are you okay?” It was as if I’d just told her I had a brain tumor. But I don’t think I’m all that unusual. I often respond to advice solicitations on my personal blog, and one of the most common questions I’m asked by young women is, “I can’t orgasm during sex—is my vagina broken?!” Their panic is all too familiar to me. I always wish I could give them a quick fix, but all I can say is: “Try to relax. I promise it will get better, but it might take some time.”

It’s said that women reach our sexual peak in our 30s or even 40s, whereas for men it’s something awkward like 16. But growing up, I never really understood how or why that would be. I just felt so sure that my 20s would be the pinnacle of my sex life—the decade when I would be my most adventurous and look and feel my best, which would naturally translate to having the best sex. (Paradoxically, I still believed this well into my mid-20s, a period when I repeatedly made the analogy that having penetrative sex felt like inserting a tampon in over and over. Sad but true.) At 30, I figured, things start to sag, you become a boring adult, and your sex life takes a backseat until, eventually, at 42ish, you switch off your uterus, buy a minivan, and sew your vagina shut forever. Little did I know.

I’m 29 now, and I genuinely feel that I’ve been having what I consider great sex for only about three years. That’s not to say that all my sexual experiences before were bad or regrettable—not at all. It’s just that I think sex—what it means to us and its function in our lives—changes with time. I think a lot of those early sexual experiences made me who I am. I found it so fun and thrilling just to be naked with someone, to get to know them in an intimate way. Also, there are just so many funny stories that result from having sex with random people. But I’ve also noticed that, since age 16, the pleasure I get from sex has been on a steady incline. I come more often, and in more positions. I have more confidence in bed, and I generally walk away from sexual encounters feeling happy and satisfied rather than limping away feeling like my vaginal walls are on fire from being forcefully railed sans vaginal lubrication. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. My friends agree. But why is it that sex gets better as we mature? Is there something physically changing, or is it all just in our heads?

I was recently discussing this with my friend, Maayan Zilberman, a 35-year-old designer and founder of the lingerie brand The Lake & Stars. For Maayan, great sex began just after 30—a point, she says, which coincided with her feeling more confident professionally. “It might be a personal thing,” she said, “but I didn’t feel like I could be the person I wanted to be sexually until I started making a good living and being taken seriously in meetings with grown-ups. I think it’s about reaching a point in your life—be it in your career, in your family, or whatever it is you have stress about—where you feel you’ve accomplished something. Because pleasure all comes down to being relaxed and feeling equal with whoever you’re having sex with, man or woman. I think that level of serenity in life is what allows for better sex.”

It makes sense. Without serenity, we’re left constantly trying to prove ourselves—in life and in bed. “As young women, we’re taught that we need to put on a show during sex,” Maayan said. “It’s similar to how we’re taught that we have to present ourselves in a certain way, to have our hair done before we leave the house, or to be a good host at a dinner party. During sex, we’re supposed to put on hot lingerie, to give a theatrical, acrobatic performance, and do all these things that make the experience memorable for the man.” In a way, we’re defining whether sex is good or not by how highly our partners rate our performance. “But now that I’m older,” she said, “I don’t consider sex good only if my partner thinks I’m really good at it. Good sex means that I also had a good time, I’m relaxed, and I’ve been satisfied.”

I really related to what Maayan said about theatrics. For a long time, I felt sex had to be extreme in some way, or that I had to impress the other person, lest the sex would be boring. And sure, having a threesome at a bus stop when I was 20 was fun, but now I’m equally excited to have intimate, I-know-exactly-how-to-touch-you-so-you-go-crazy sex on a Wednesday night with my girlfriend.

I’m not trying to suggest that sex gets better with age because it’s assumed one is in a long-term, loving relationship. I think sex gets better with randoms, too. During my recent four months of singledom, I was really shocked at my ability to come with guys I’d just met—this is seriously a new thing for me! Part of it had to do with increased confidence and entitlement—sort of like learning to “Lean In,” but the sex version—but it was also partly that I just didn’t give a fuck. I was remarkably undistracted by concerns about how I looked or if I was making weird faces or sounds. I was just relaxed. And not giving a fuck during sex is actually really hard, even when you’re drunk.

I recently called my friend Shula Melamed, a sex and relationship coach who works with individuals and couples, to ask if all this extra pleasure I’m experiencing is because something in my body or vag is actually changing. Basically, her answer was no. But she did say that a woman’s sexual peak can often be later than a man’s because it takes women longer to stop giving a fuck. Shula worded it slightly differently: “Think about how much more permission men have to be sexual from a young age,” she said. “For women, you hit puberty, and you suddenly have this really powerful, weird thing that is your sexuality, and there’s so much to worry about: You have to figure out how to use it; it’s something you’re going to be judged on socially; it could potentially cause you danger; you have to make sure people don’t take advantage of you. And on top of all that, you’re judging yourself. Do I look good enough? Should I really be sleeping with this person? It’s a miracle that women can have orgasms at all if you consider all these things going through our heads.” Before we can really focus on our own pleasure, Shula said, we have to come to terms with the fact that we’re being monitored by our culture, or our families, or our religion—all the things that simultaneously glorify and condemn our sexuality.

Of course, not every woman has a transformative moment of self-discovery around 30ish that’s followed by a period of transcendental, revelatory sex. (Unforch.) But a lot do. “Around the late 20s or early 30s, you just hit this stride where you know more and care less, and so you’re able to get into a flow state of what it is you want, and how to get it,” Shula said. “You’re more confident in who you are and what feels good, and less concerned with who you ‘should’ be dating or the type of sex you ‘should’ be having. Once you’re freed of those anxieties, you’re able to experience sex on a much deeper and more satisfying level.” In other words: Yes, good sex is all in your head.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair and Makeup: Courtney Perkins

The post Breathless: Does Sex Get Better With Age? appeared first on Vogue.

Butt sex is officially on trend. To kick off the fourth season of Girls tonight, Marnie gets bent over a sink and has her butt eaten out—and really likes it. It is strongly implied that anal sex is what we are watching in a certain scene of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, Inherent Vice. Mindy Kaling recently did a whole episode of The Mindy Project on anal sex—which aired, remember, on network TV. And in November, Harvard University offered a workshop called “What What in the Butt: Anal Sex 101.” (Yup. Not a lie.) The class, which was part of the university’s annual “Sex Week,” educated students about the butt as a potential pleasure site for all genders, how to have anal sex well, anal toys, hygiene, and so on. Does all of this mean that anal sex is no longer taboo?

It makes sense, really. The butt is an erogenous zone for both men and women. Anal sex is hugely popular in porn—and getting more popular. Some Christians even try it before normal sex! And realistically, ass play is something most of us have either tried, considered trying . . . or stumbled upon, accidentally or on purpose. While it’s obviously hard to get exact numbers, a study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2010 found that 40 percent of women by the ages of 20 to 24 have tried anal sex. Also, hello, anal sex is a primary way that gay men have sex. Doesn’t it seem high time we all stop being so embarrassed or squeamish about the topic of butt stuff, or simply pretending it doesn’t exist?

I sort of can’t believe I’m writing this, especially for Vogue, but, sigh, here goes . . . I had anal sex for the first time when I was seventeen. It wasn’t awful—thankfully, my boyfriend wasn’t very big—but it didn’t feel good, either. It just felt like a more uncomfortable version of going to the bathroom, except in reverse. Afterward, I was pretty happy to leave my days of butt experimentation behind me. My thinking was: If the door’s open, why insist on crawling through the window? But a few years later, a new boyfriend started begging me for it. I had just gotten my tonsils out, and was on a pretty high dose of painkillers, so I figured, “Yeah, sure. Might as well get this over with while I basically can’t feel my body.” That time it didn’t hurt. It was more of a dull ache that at times felt strangely good, and I was actually enjoying the power dynamic of it. However, when he pulled out, there was some, ya know, stuff, which freaked me out so much that I immediately started crying. He didn’t seem to care, but I was so traumatized that I mentally filed butt sex under: never again.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Strangely, during all this time of largely neglected butt play, anal sex still played a major role in my fantasies; it plays to my submissive tendency. And I’m a big fan of it in porn, too. But I always thought it was one of those things that’s better left in Fantasyland, where one doesn’t have to worry about the reality of what happens when you thrust something in and out of your butt.

Until one strange evening a few years ago. I was with yet another boyfriend, and we had gotten into an awful fight—that type of fight that is often perversely resolved by rough sex. At the height of the heated session, without saying a word, my boyfriend flipped me onto my stomach, spit onto my butt, and starting fucking my ass. It was clearly a power move, but I was so turned on by the situation that, eventually—with the assistance of self-masturbation, obviously—I was able to come. It was a miracle.

After that, I became kind of obsessed. This one good butt experience had opened my mind to a world of possibilities. The following night, I asked my boyfriend to do it again. Not only was I into the fact that it felt kind of transgressive, but I’d also basically worked out that when the dick is in your butt, it’s far enough out of the way of your vagina that you can masturbate in peace. Unfortunately, it turned out that my boyfriend was far less into anal than me. Soon, he began getting annoyed at how frequently I asked for it, until one night, when he was particularly fed up, he actually kicked me out of his house, claiming that I was “possessed by an anal demon.”

The post Breathless: Is Anal Sex No Longer Taboo? appeared first on Vogue.

Karley Sciortino writes “Breathless,” for Vogue.com, a column about sex and relationships.

I’ve always found the pseudo-empowerment idea that women should wear sexy underwear “for themselves” really ridiculous. It’s like when people claim they wear makeup for themselves. As if I’m going to bring my liquid eyeliner and corset to a deserted island. When I’m home alone, I exclusively wear hideous, beige granny panties, and I feel amazing(ly comfortable). Lingerie has a very specific purpose, which is to enhance the erotic experience. It’s worn to be seen by another person—or persons, as the case may be—and there’s just no way around that, in my opinion. However, that’s not to say lingerie doesn’t equally benefit everyone involved.

Wearing something sexy makes you feel sexier. When I’m in beautiful lingerie and everything’s been sufficiently pushed and squeezed, I become more confident and aroused, which is of course makes the sexual experience better for my partner too. Excitement and inhibition in the bedroom are contagious. The opposite is also true. Like, we’ve all been in that situation where you hook up with someone unexpectedly, only to realize you’re wearing the underwear you normally save for when you’re on your period—tragic. It instantly throws you off your game. Valentine’s Day, however, is a chance to indulge in cheesy, overly planned sexual encounters. On no other day of the year is it more appropriate to match your headband to your nail polish to your thong. But different types of lingerie create different effects. And if you choose the wrong lingerie, you will die alone.

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One Night Stand
There’s a popular meme that says, “If her panties match her bra when you take her clothes off, it wasn't you who decided to have sex.” If you’re looking for a one-night stand for V-Day, this Dolce ensemble will let your new lover know who’s calling the shots. Also, high-waisted panties make everyone look like a bombshell.

Dolce & Gabbana high-waisted lace and polka-dot briefs, $327; matchesfashion.com; Dolce & Gabbana lace and polka-dot balconette bra, $389; matchesfashion.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of matchesfashion.com (2)

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Friend Zone
If you’re spending Valentine’s with a platonic friend, eating your feelings in front of a bad rom-com, wearing sexy lingerie might make things a little awkward. Best to go with at least a full-coverage panty, or a cute (read: non-predatory) pajama set.

Joe Fresh PJ set, $25; For information: joefresh.com; Naja Miss Galore panties, $18; For information: naja.co

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of Joe Fresh; Courtesy of naja.co

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Threesome
If you’re planning a threesome for V-Day, you might as well go all-out and wear a pink lace jumpsuit with matching stilettos. It’s important to always be the best dressed person at the orgy.

Zinke daisy jumper, $128; journelle.com; Charlotte Olympia + Agent Provocateur Candice shoe, $895; net-a-porter.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of Journelle; Courtesy of net-a-porter.com

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Girlfriend Material
The beginning stages of a relationship can be exhausting, because you always have to make an effort—heels, bikini waxes, actual conversations . . . it’s a lot to deal with. If you’re looking to segue out of that phase, and into the phase where you’re allowed to act like slobs in front of each other, this is the perfect Valentine’s outfit for you.

Sloane & Tate Silverlake sleep short, $46; journelle.com; Zinke Megan lace tee, $96; journelle.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of Journelle (2)

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For the Adventurous Type
We’re living in a Fifty Shades world, and role play is in. Pair this apron with little else.

L’Agent Esthar apron, $66; journelle.com

Photo: Courtesy of Journelle

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First Date Sealed the Deal
There’s something so erotic about the juxtaposition of skimpy underwear with a men’s button-up. This classic look will seal the deal on any first date.

Saint Laurent stretch-silk georgette soft-cup triangle bra, $667; net-a-porter.com; Massimo Dutti large striped blouse, $90; massimodutti.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of net-a-porter.com; Courtesy of Massimo Dutti

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Second Base
Sometimes it’s nice to take it slow. If you’re not ready to go all the way, keep it casual with a cute, sporty cotton underwear set.

Michael Kors bra, $203; yoox.com; Loup Charmant frilled lightweight cotton briefs, $41; matchesfashion.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of yoox.com; Courtesy of matchesfashion.com

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Spice It Up
Just because you’re in a long-term relationship doesn’t mean you should disregard Valentine’s Day. Break the routine of eating Seamless Chinese food while lying down in front of Netflix, and put on an impossibly sexy, red lace AP lingerie set. You can go back to sweatpants on Sunday.

Agent Provocateur Annoushka lace suspender belt, $320; net-a-porter.com; Agent Provocateur Annoushka lace underwired bra, $320; net-a-porter.com

Photo: Courtesy of net-a-porter.com (2)

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Sleeping Alone and Loving It
Pair with a vibrator for the perfect night in.

The sleep shirt Swiss-dot cotton nightgown, $250; net-a-porter.com

Photo: Courtesy of net-a-porter.com

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Friends with Benefits
The best thing about having a FWB is you’re allowed to be as playful as you want, and there’s no real risk involved. Why not show up dressed like a sexy flasher?

Maison Margiela trench, $1,493; lagarconne.com; Stella McCartney Millie Drawing lace soft-cup triangle bra, $75; For information: net-a-porter.com; Stella McCartney Millie Drawing lace and Swiss-dot tulle briefs, $40; For information: net-a-porter.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of lagarconne.com; Courtesy of net-a-porter.com (2)

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Two Easy Pieces
If you’re trying to play it cool, any lingerie that involves excessive straps, chains or a harness is out of the question. You want your sexiness to appear effortless, not like you needed the assistance of three of your girlfriends to even get into your underwear in the first place. This look will make you feel confident, intimidating, yet still totally comfortable.

Romwe V neck split crop coffee sweater, $42; romwe.com; The Nude Label the turquoise paneled brief, $84; for information: thenudelabel.com

Photo: (from left) Courtesy of romwe.com; Courtesy of shoplesnouvelles.com

 Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

The post The Breathless Guide to Valentine’s Day Lingerie: One Night, 11 Looks appeared first on Vogue.

This Valentine’s Day, lovers the world over will open heart-shaped boxes to find, instead of chocolate, a blindfold and matching whip. “I love you, baby,” the card will read. “Here’s a leather paddle—with special holes to reduce air resistance and increase pain!” BDSM, as you most likely already know, has gone mainstream. The theatrical release of Fifty Shades of Grey is this weekend, and the Internet is teeming with articles with titles like “Beginner’s BDSM: 8 Torture Tools You Can Find in Your Own House!” and “How to Beat Up Your Boyfriend Safely!” Of course, E. L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy (more than 100 million books sold worldwide) played a big part in all of this. But the popularization of BDSM (bondage/discipline, domination/submission, sadism/masochism) is also just the inevitability of the Internet. Today, anyone with a unique or extreme sexual persuasion can easily find people like themselves and create communities. People have always wanted to have adventures, and technology now facilitates them.

But what effect is the popularization of BDSM really having, both on newcomers to the territory and on people who were of the sadomasochistic persuasion long before Christian Grey? We’ve established that the immense popularity of the book is inspiring people to push their sexual boundaries—the sale of sex toys is through the roof!—and to discover new ways to make sex a heightened experience. The dying sex lives of millions of middle-aged couples have apparently been rejuvenated. Even my devout Catholic mother is a fan. (Afterward, over dinner, she asked me, “Did you know that some women like it when men whip their vagina?!” Not only had she never experienced it, but the idea of it happening in the world had never even entered her consciousness. Her mind was blown.) And the book’s popularity has certainly proven that there’s an immense untapped market for commercial erotica. But when we talk about BDSM going mainstream, we’re really talking about only a small element of what actually goes on inside that world-—BDSM-lite, as I like to call it. Blindfolds, cuffs, and collars are merely the tip of the iceberg.

I suppose I must have known about BDSM since my early teens, at least abstractly. At 20, I was given as a gift Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill’s famous book of short stories. The book is largely about sexuality, and the potential darkness of the human heart, often exhibited through power-play relationships. Quite plainly, the book changed my life and made me want to be a writer. In Bad Behavior, there are whips, chains, and bruises. Women are tied to desks and spanked by their bosses (the amazingly perverted film Secretary is based on one of the stories in this book), but that’s just the surface of what Gaitskill talks about. Really, the book is about the psychology of people who have guilty impulses. It describes, in visceral detail, the sort of relationship in which one person willingly hands over the power to another, and the subsequent pleasure and pain that results from that decision. The dynamic fascinated me.

My first IRL experience with S&M came a couple years later. I was living in a squat in London, and one of my many housemates had somehow found a lawyer online who agreed to clean our house, looking only to be abused in return. “Ya know,” my housemate explained casually, “he’s just a house-cleaning slave.” From then on, every month, this man would scrub our floors and toilets as my housemate half-heartedly called him names and occasionally spat on his head. I wasn’t necessarily freaked out by the situation; I was more just confused, firstly, about why anyone would agree to clean a decrepit abandoned warehouse inhabited by fifteen 20-somethings, but also, because I didn’t understand the appeal of abuse without a romantic component. I could wrap my head around dominance and submission in a sexual context, but this scenario was just too abstract.

A few years later, I moved to New York. I was 24 and broke, and a magazine had given me the assignment of shadowing a dominatrix for a week, so that I could write an article about what actually goes on behind a domme’s closed doors. I had little idea what to expect. This was 2010, a couple years before Fifty Shades became a thing, when the world of BDSM was basically invisible to mainstream culture. I remember getting permission to leave my shift early at the Chinese restaurant where I worked, and anxiously riding the subway to her West Village apartment. She answered the door in nothing but a thong, then proceeded to oil her entire body and slide into a red latex bodysuit, while I sat on the couch with a notepad on my lap, staring at the ceiling. I became nervous that I was just going to get in the way. “Not at all!” she exclaimed with a big, sweet smile. “Most of my clients love having civilians watch their session, because it adds to the humiliation factor.” And with that, I became a willing civilian.

Over the next week, I watched as the dominatrix put grown men into diapers and pretended to breastfeed them. I watched her stick needles into places many would faint at the thought of piercing. I saw her pee on a Wall Street exec; dress a Hasidic Jew in a pink, leopard-print thong; and force a variety of people to eat out of dog bowls. For most of it, I felt something between excitement and nausea. But it was amazing how quickly I became desensitized. What shocked and appalled me on day one was NBD by day three. BDSM can be like a drug—you quickly build a tolerance.

What was intended solely as a journalistic endeavor turned into a friendship between the dominatrix and me, which quickly led to her offering me a job as her assistant. I couldn’t really say no, given that the rate was triple what I was making at the Chinese place. For the next year, I was her sidekick of sorts, and it was the best intro to BDSM a girl who never cared about BDSM could ask for. Through this job, I learned that BDSM is not something I’m really into sexually. But I was getting something out of it—something besides money, voyeuristic thrills, and the obvious ego boost.

At its heart, BDSM is about getting outside of yourself, and when it’s good, it can be an out-of-body experience. At the end of almost every session with the dominatrix, the submissive would have a moment of catharsis in which he or she would blab unedited about their life, fears, and fantasies. It was clear that the dominatrix was seeing a part of these people that wasn’t seen by their rest of the world—not even their partners, families, or close friends. It’s rare to see such radical honesty, and so it could often be a special and sort of aspirational experience to watch someone in this state. The domme is not just the person with the whip—she’s also their escape. I came to realize the power of BDSM, even outside of a conventional sexual relationship. (I also realized that my ex-squatmate was a terrible domme.)

We fear and demonize what we don’t understand. For years, people within the BDSM community, and even people with pretty run-of-the-mill fetishes, have been labeled sex freaks, psychologically unwell, or even threatening. But now that people have a better understanding of what BDSM is, and its potential pleasures, this is beginning to change. Mainstream acceptance can help to combat feelings of shame or exclusion that some people associate with their sexual desires, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Of course, not everyone within the pre-existing BDSM community is happy about the Fifty Shades revolution. People who are into BDSM feel special—they get pleasure from having transgressed into a world of taboo—and if that taboo is diluted, it loses its cache. Recently, I asked my dominatrix friend (and ex-employer) how she felt about all of it. “The current trend of BDSM in the mainstream is an exciting step forward for sexual freedom,” she told me, “though much of its portrayal is still rooted in sensationalism and inaccuracy. What many mainstream audience members perhaps don’t understand is that, at its core, BDSM is about love, trust, respect, and mutual enjoyment. I wish I could put that disclaimer on every book, film, and music video that’s using kink to get attention right now!”

There will be a lot of kinky toys exchanged this Valentine’s Day, but BDSM is not about ropes or whips—it’s about using those tools to practice a power dynamic. It’s about psychology. Without that, you’re really just having normal sex, except one person is tied up.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair and Makeup: Courtney Perkins

The post Breathless: Has Fifty Shades of Grey Made S&M Too Mainstream? appeared first on Vogue.

“When most people think about Native American culture, they think of The Last of the Mohicans,” says writer and director Sydney Freeland. “We typically see stereotypes like the wise elder, the angry brave, or the gentle maiden. I was trying to dig a little deeper than that, and to show how diverse life on the reservation actually is.”

Freeland is talking about her debut feature, Drunktown’s Finest, which opens in New York this weekend. The film pulls from her own experience growing up on a Navajo reservation, and as a transgender woman. But as specific as these circumstances may sound, the stories Freeland tells are relatable, about characters struggling to find their identity—ethically, spiritually, and sexually.

The film follows three young Native Americans living on a reservation in New Mexico. There’s Felixia, a promiscuous young trans girl who’s forced to fend off bullies as she strives to be a model; the bookish Nizhoni, whose adoptive white parents try to distance her from her Navajo background; and Sick Boy, a rebellious father-to-be preparing to join the army. The three narratives begin to intertwine as the characters struggle to reconcile where they came from with where they want to go.

What’s really beautiful about this film is its universality. It left me with the same heightened feeling of connectedness that I had after seeing Boyhood. One of the most touching elements, for me, was the loving relationship between Felixa and her extremely traditional Navajo family—the film subverts the cliched narrative of the LGBT youth at odds with his or her conservative parents. The characters aren’t predictable, nor can their problems be neatly solved. They are honest, raw, flawed, and a bit lost, but you root for them, in part because you can’t help but see aspects of yourself reflected in their lives.

Freeland began working on Drunktown’s Finest at the Sundance Directors Lab, the highly selective workshop run by Robert Redford, who is now one of the film’s executive producers. “You’re flown to a resort in Utah for a month, where you shoot four scenes from your film that never see the light of day,” explains Freeland. “The idea is that you’re given a place to experiment, and to fail, which ultimately allows you to grow as a filmmaker.” Redford was drawn to Freeland’s story right away.“Sydney’s work is raw and original,” he says. “Being an advocate for Native American rights for many years, I felt this film showed a dark side of the Native American outcome, which needed to be told in order to promote understanding and healing.”

The film premiered at Sundance last year and has since won a number of awards, including Outfest’s Grand Jury Award for U.S. Dramatic Feature Film and the HBO-sponsored Audience Award for First Feature. Its theatrical release comes at an auspicious moment, one that finds mainstream culture suddenly engaged by storytelling about transgender people both fictional and real. Freeland hopes her film will add to the cultural conversation about the trans experience. “I transitioned ten years ago,” she says. “When I was younger, I didn’t have a frame of reference for what I was going through, but things have changed so much. Even just in the past year we’ve had Laverne Cox on the cover of Time, Jill Soloway’s award-winning series Transparent, and in terms of exposure, those things are so empowering. If I could go back and tell myself ten years ago that in 2015 trans people would be part of popular culture, and have a platform to speak, I would have said, ‘You’re crazy.’”
Drunktown’s Finest opens in New York on Friday, February 20.

The post Why You Should See Drunktown’s Finest This Weekend appeared first on Vogue.

What does the perfect couple look like? It’s hard to say anymore. The cultural landscape is changing—the move toward gender and marriage equality is becoming a reality—and our vision of an aspirational couple is changing along with it. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, given that the third season of House of Cards is coming out this month. Frank and Claire Underwood, the political couple at the show’s center, are childless, nonmonogamous, and equally power hungry. They’re miles away from the old-fashioned, cookie-cutter archetype of an ideal marriage, and yet, to me, they are unlikely role models in love. They’re so deeply connected, so tolerant and supportive of one another’s pursuits, that one can’t help but envy what they have. But the Underwoods are just one of many new examples of transparency and acceptance linked with intense romantic love to be found in the culture right now.

It might seem silly to cite the Underwoods as an exemplary modern couple, given that they’re fictional. But when you think about it, our perceptions of the relationships of actual people, famous or not, aren’t very “real” either—we see a carefully constructed image, or the projection of our own fantasies, but we have no idea what really goes on behind the scenes. No matter how much we speculate, or how many think pieces we write, we will never know what was actually said inside the elevator. But what’s interesting about fantasy is how it can still inform our reality. Fantasy allows us to think more creatively about our own lives, which is why one hopes that good fiction is always slightly ahead of the culture.

“I love that woman, I love her more than sharks love blood,” Frank says of Claire early on in season one. It’s clear the feeling is reciprocal. The Underwoods are a team, infinitely stronger together than apart. They also both occasionally sleep with other people. Sure, that’s not so unusual, except that the Underwoods hide nothing from each other. They are sexually lenient, both confident that their marriage is always most important. While we don’t ever see them make love, watching them share their nightly cigarette is a far more intimate experience than most sex scenes one sees on television. And I know I’m not the only one who became far too giddy when, on a hit American show, a political power couple had an MMF threesome with an insanely hot bodyguard some twenty years their junior.

“You know what Francis said to me when he proposed?” Claire asked in season one. “He said, ‘Claire, if all you want is happiness, say no. I’m not going to give you a couple of kids and count the days until retirement. I promise you freedom from that. I promise you’ll never be bored.’” Boredom is the death of a relationship, and the Underwoods have found a way to avoid it. “Fire needs air. Desire needs space,” therapist Esther Perel said in her widely viewed TED Talk, The Secret to Desire in a Long-Term Relationship. Perel’s book, Mating in Captivity, argues that the totally merged, comfort-seeking nature of the modern marriage is killing novelty and adventure. Clearly, the Underwoods’ openness is not just a facet of their intense romantic love—it’s integral to it.

Another inspiring fictional couple of late are the paramours at the center of Jim Jarmusch’s beautiful, poetic love story, Only Lovers Left Alive. The film, which came out in the U.S. last year, follows Adam and Eve, a vampire couple who have been married for literally centuries. But counter to the usual long-term relationship narrative, time has only made their love and mutual respect stronger. The film begins with Eve (Tilda Swinton) living in Tangier, and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) in Detroit. They thrive in different cities, so for the time being they’re doing the long-distance thing. Of course, theirs is a unique case, given that they’re immortal and so time is certainly not of the essence, but there’s something to be said for the ability to let your partner off the leash. And despite being half a world apart, the couple is still incredibly connected, inspiring Adam to compare their relationship to Einstein’s theory of entanglement: “When you separate an entwined particle, and you move both parts away from the other, even at opposite ends of the universe, if you alter or affect one, the other will be identically altered or affected.”

Eve goes to Detroit to cheer up Adam, who at the time is bummed on life. She puts Denise LaSalle’s “Trapped By a Thing Called Love” on the record player. It’s the most heartbreakingly sweet moment. Watching them do this extremely intimate, almost childlike dance around the living room is enough to restore one’s faith in everlasting love.

Back in the real world, a hugely aspirational romance—for me, anyway—was the recent one between the adult-film stars James Deen and Stoya. (Or, as I like to call them, “the Brangelina of porn.) Both performers have had crossover success, Deen as a mainstream actor, having starred in Paul Schrader’s The Canyons, and Stoya as a writer. Last year, I interviewed Stoya for an article about HIV awareness. She told me, “I’m really spoiled because I’m dating James Deen, and he would happily orchestrate just about any sexual fantasy that I have, and could make it happen in a safe environment.” Talk about progressive! Like, imagine if you could just say to your boyfriend, “So, last night I had this really sexy dream where two dudes broke into my apartment, covered me in whipped cream, and then forced me to cum for hours,” and then the next day he just casually made a few calls and suddenly your dream was a reality? It’s basically the equivalent of dating your sexual fairy godmother. Sadly, it appears that Deen and Stoya may have split up. I suppose all good things must come to an end.

A more commonly cited example of progressive modern love is the relationship between Dan Savage and his husband, Terry Miller. They’ve been together for 20 years or so now, have a son, and are painfully cute on Instagram. (Almost as cute as Cass and Ali Bird!) For years now, Savage has been an active proponent of what he calls “monogamish”—opening the door of your relationship just a crack, to keep it from blowing off its hinges, as he puts it. He says the ish helps to sidestep some of the social stigma around nonmonogamy. While many assume that nonmonogamy is an endless slutfest of ecstasy-fueled orgies (especially when it comes to gay men), that’s generally not the case at all. Savage is also very clear that he’s not supporting betrayal and believes people should honor the commitments they make. But as an alternative to an outdated conception of marriage, Savage has said the benefits of being open are “a certain kind of realism, and an allowance for some sexual adventures, whether you go on them alone or with your partner.”

Unfortunately, we still live in a world where many non-straight celebrities find it difficult to come out, for fear of hurting their careers, or of facing social backlash. It seems most people think about sexuality in black-and-white terms—you’re either gay or you’re straight, and both camps leave you very little latitude to deviate from the pack without being called a traitor. Which is why it was so cool when, last year, supermodel Cara Delevingne seemed to be publicly dating a woman and never caved to any pressure to define what that meant—it was just like, yeah, I’m with a girl now, whatever. It perfectly trivialized our culture’s obsession with labels, and relayed the message that love is about people, not about gender, in the most casual yet powerful way. If you ask me, she’s the perfect role model for the post-label future, where people love by a new set of rules.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair and Makeup: Ingeborg

The post Breathless: Why Frank and Claire Underwood of House of Cards Are My New Love Role Models appeared first on Vogue.

Choosing the right threesome partner is a delicate and complex operation. If you mess it up, you could ruin your relationship and life forever. Just kidding. But there is an art, and etiquette, to organizing a ménage à trois. It’s like a dinner party—one wrong guest and the whole dynamic is off.

Often, a threesome is one of the first steps couples take down the path to a more progressive relationship dynamic. But don’t panic: They don’t have to be a gateway drug. It’s not like you threesome once and the next thing you know you’re in a poly relationship with four people you met at Burning Man.

In my mind there are three types of threeways. First, there’s the kind between three separate people who aren’t romantically linked. Generally, this type is unplanned—you’re all hanging out after a night of partying and then, whoops, you’re inside each other. Then there’s the threesome between a couple and a third person that happens spontaneously. In my mind, this is the threesome holy grail: genuine attraction sparks between everyone, and a fun moment impulsively turns erotic. And then there’s the most common type of threesome: when a couple hunts for a third person, often in a desperate way, stalking unsuspecting singles at bars and dating sites. Yeah, been there. The question is: How does one avoid being the creepy couple, and instead elegantly finesse one’s way into a threesome? What’s the secret key to orchestrating a good one—one that makes you feel happy and liberated, rather than like a jealous monster?

When I was 24, my then boyfriend and I decided we wanted to try a threesome. At the time I didn’t know the protocol—I had only dabbled with threesome scenario number one—but I intuitively knew I didn’t want the third person to be a close friend, or someone my boyfriend or I saw on a regular basis. That just seemed a bit messy. Because I’d just moved to New York and didn’t know many people, we decided to pursue previous hook-ups of his—not serious exes, but booty-call types. We’d lie in bed together looking at the girls on Facebook, and when we agreed on one, he would simply text her: “Do you wanna get threesome’d?” Surprisingly, most of them said yes.

At the beginning, the threesomes were making us closer—it felt like something kinky we were doing together. Plus, the pursuit was really fun—choosing girls, the anticipation of their response, the pillow talk after they left. It was an intense bonding experience, on par with a good drug trip or a romantic weekend away. I even began to fully understand the saying “spice up your sex life”—bringing someone else’s sexual energy into your existing dynamic does add a new flavor (lol), sometimes in a lasting way.

However, there was definitely a curve. While our relationship was strong, the threesomes were great. But then, for separate reasons, things between us got a bit rocky. Not surprisingly, bringing someone else into our bed during that period didn’t go so well. Maybe it was in my head, but I felt like I was being slightly left out during sex. For the first time, I regretted choosing a girl he had a pre-existing relationship with and couldn’t stop myself from picturing what their sex life was like before me. It was the last threesome we ever had.

My next threesome effort was slightly more successful—but again, only for a while. I was on a trip to San Francisco with a guy I was casually dating when he suggested I find a girl for a threesome. I didn’t really know anyone in SF, but as a joke, I said, “Sure, I’ll just tweet about it.” I mean, what’s the point of building a large social network if not to recruit strangers for group sex?

My tweet read, “I’m in SF and I need a female guest star in my 3some tonight. Who’s up for it?” To my surprise, within a couple of hours I had a handful of seemingly DTF girls sending me photos. And I swear this is the truth: Later that night a 22-year-old Egyptian hipster babe showed up at the hotel and banged us. As you can imagine, this made the dude think I was a magical being with the power to make miracles happen. This was both good and bad. Good because the night was fun, bad because, afterward, he thought it was something I could make happen all the time. Wanting to impress him, I then became that girl, hitting up people I barely knew with texts like, “Hey! We should get together again soon! Or, actually, lol, wanna have a threesome with me?” And then like five hours later they’re like: “Haha, aww, thanks 4 askin but I’m just crazy busy at work rn.” Even though she works at a bar.

Given the pitfalls I’ve encountered, I was interested to know the threesome strategy of a couple who managed to maintain the dynamic, in a positive way. My friends Michelle and Mathew, a couple of musicians from Brooklyn, are two of the most skilled threesomers I know. They’ve been together for two and a half years, and they had their first threeway six months in, after Michelle, who’s bi, suggested it. Contrary to what some might immediately assume, they’re not in an open relationship—they don’t hook up with people separately—but rather, as Mathew calls it, “a progressive relationship.”

Their first threesome was with an acquaintance they met through the music scene. One evening, Mathew casually asked the girl if she’d ever considered hooking up with a couple. She said yes. Afterward, he and Michelle began making efforts to hang out with her more regularly. “It was like we were going on dates, but not really,” said Michelle. “We were just getting to know each other.” A few weeks later it happened, very organically.

“I liked the teamwork aspect of it,” Michelle recalled of their first time. “Afterward, the two of us went out and got smoothies, and we just felt so much closer. You have to feel like you’re doing it together, like a team-building exercise, otherwise you’re just going to feel like competitors.”

But see, Mathew and Michelle are smart, so before setting off on their ménage journey, they set specific rules: no past hook-ups, no repeats. “You have to get a clear handle on what both of you want and need, your fears, comforts, and discomforts,” Mathew told me. “Some people think talking it through poses the threat of killing the excitement, but in-depth communication is so necessary.”

“That’s why I’ve actually felt our best threesomes have been sober,” added Michelle. “Threesomes only work for everyone involved if there’s an equal distribution of attention in all directions. When you have a clear head, it’s a lot easier to make sure no one’s feelings are hurt and that everyone is feeling appreciated appropriately.” In other words, don’t get so drunk that you pass out. As someone who has fallen asleep at an orgy, I can tell you that it’s extremely awkward when you finally wake up.

Michelle and Mathew find that hooking up with friends or acquaintances works best for them. They devote time to courting the girls beforehand—dinner dates, drinks, and occasional sexting sessions. “It helps to know them,” said Michelle. “Treat your threesome-ees like humans! They’re not objects or an impedance on your relationship. They’re people.” Next on their list is a threesome with a guy, which Michelle has wanted for a long time. It’s slightly out of Mathew​’s comfort zone, but he wants to do it for her. “It’s going to be a hurdle for me,” he said, “but I don’t want to be selfish.”

While I generally think it’s positive to push one’s boundaries when it comes to sex, it’s never a good idea to force yourself into a situation you’re not comfortable with. So even though I’m totally pro-threesome, I’ve never had a threesome with my current girlfriend, because I intuitively feel that jealousy would be an issue with us, at least for now. But if it’s something you want to try, it’s worth it to take the time to lay out a plan of action. And don’t expect it to be a cure-all. “Have realistic expectations,” Michelle said. “A lot of people think a threesome is going to be super life-changing, or that it’s going to help you ‘find yourself,’ or blow open the relationship. Chill out. It’s never going to be as crazy as you think it’s going to be.”

Done well, threesomes can bring a couple closer together. “I’m so happy that the ability to have semi-frequent threeways worked out in our relationship,” Michelle said. “It allows us to regularly have conversations about how we’re feeling, and how secure we are with each other, and that’s something so many couples don’t take the time to do.”​

Hair and Makeup: Ingeborg

The post Breathless: How to Have a Threesome appeared first on Vogue.

Breast implants are bigger than ever. They remain the number one cosmetic surgery in the United States—more popular than nose jobs and liposuction. Even my favorite small-chested bombshells are going under the knife: Iggy Azalea, and allegedly Kate Hudson, too. There’s even ads for breast implants on the New York subway, with the tagline “dream big.” As if getting implants were as casual as buying toothpaste.

It was in 1962 that the first silicon breast implant surgery was performed, just three years after our beloved (and anatomically impossible) Barbie hit the scene. There was a period of unpopularity during the nineties, after a series of women suffered dangerous complications. But that’s all behind us. Last year, nearly 300,000 women got implants in the United States (and that number grows to nearly 400,000 if you add breast lifts). Why are so many women suddenly opting for implants?

I don’t want to criticize women who modify their breasts. I believe in total body autonomy. In my mind, feminism today is evolving beyond a desire for gender equality and toward a desire for the freedom to be an individual, whether that means rejecting female tropes altogether, getting surgery, being gay, wearing a microdress—whatever. Who is anyone else to judge, really? But in order for these choices to be recognized as truly free, we have to examine the social environment in which they are made, one in which we feel obliged to pursue a “sexy” and “perfect” body to the point of undergoing surgery. It’s a catch-22: While I sometimes feel guilty for thinking it, I can’t help but feel that getting breast implants means that you’re wearing your insecurity on your chest. Literally.

Of course, I’m not above the impulse. I have big boobs that also happen to be quite droopy. (I’ve started saying “droopy” instead of “saggy” because it somehow sounds more chic). In order to lift my breasts to the right place, I have to wear an enormous, specialty support bra that looks like a piece of orthopedic armor. Unsexy. For years I wished my boobs were perkier, but never enough to seriously consider changing them. Until a few years ago, when I began casually sleeping with a thirty-something publisher. One evening after sex, he asked me if I’d “ever been heavier.” I told him no, aside from weighing about fifteen pounds more in my early twenties. He replied, “Oh, because you have the breasts of a woman who’s lost a lot of weight.” Aka, deflated boobs.

For months afterward, I was obsessed with Googling photos of breast lifts: how bad the scars were; how much it would cost (around $6K for a good New York doctor, which was out of my price range); whether I would lose breast mass or nipple sensation. I was seriously considering this, all because of the opinion of some idiot (who, by the way, has a disgusting amount of body hair, which I never mentioned because I am a decent person, but which I actually might tell him in an email right now). I never went through with it, thank god—and this is similar to the thanks I feel for never having gotten that star tattoo on my wrist at nineteen, in order to seem punk. Also? Boobs are supposed to fall into our armpits when we lie down! But of course, if I had decided to take the plunge, any plastic surgeon in the world would have deemed me a “perfect candidate.” Everyone’s a perfect candidate for surgery, no matter what you look like, in a world so skilled at making women feel like we’re never good enough.

While writing this column, I naturally wanted to speak with a woman who’s had implants. But when I stopped to think, I was taken aback to realize that I don’t know a single woman with fake boobs. So I sent an email to three of my most social female friends, asking for suggestions. Still, no dice. It made me wonder: Who are all these women getting implants? Well, statistics have shown the majority of supporters are women between 30 and 39, living on the country’s Western side. The lowest numbers are from the East Coast. I suppose the numbers explain my challenge.

Eventually, through a friend of a friend, I met Christina, a 30-year-old visual manager at BCBG. Christina got silicone implants at 22, increasing from a B cup to a DD. Despite the size increase, she said most people wouldn’t know she has implants. “I didn’t feel like my body was proportionate before,” Christina told me. “If you’re a size zero with double Ds, it’s so obvious, but I’m a size twelve, so it looks normal. My body just needed it. Clothes fit me so much better now.”

For Christina, the implants were an overall positive experience. “I love it,” she said. “I can’t imagine not having them now. I’m definitely more confident, during sex and in general. When I look back at old pictures, I’m like ugh.” She even maintained nipple sensation afterward, which her doctor warned her might be lost. “If you look really close you can see a scar around the nipple, but it’s not super noticeable,” she said. And her sexual partners since haven’t complained, either. “You’re never going to please everyone—half the guys will like it, half won’t—so what’s most important is that you’re doing it for yourself, not to impress other people.”

The only downside to her implants was the price: $11,000, which she split with her parents. Also, implants should be redone every ten years, she adds, to avoid leaking and other complications, which means another big bill is soon to come.

It’s hard to disregard the story of woman whose implants have made her feel better about herself. Still, the idea of a body “needing” implants is what scares me. Maybe I’m being naive, but the current rise in the breast implants surprises me, given the increasing diversity in female body types that are widely considered desirable. When I was in high school, in the early aughts, being too thin was in. It was the era of Calista Flockhart, Mischa Barton, and the Olsen twins, and for a naturally curvy girl like myself, the standard seemed impossible. We still hold women to unrealistic standards, sure, but at least there is a broader definition of the ideal form. Confident, curvy women like Beyoncé, Kate Upton, and Sofia Vergara get as much admiration as waifs like Keira Knightley and Cara Delevingne. And then there’s women like Rihanna, for whom it’s far more about the butt and thighs than anything else. The same is true for the porn world. Three of the biggest stars of the past decade—Sasha Grey, Stoya, and Tori Black—have all rejected porn’s stereotypical bigger-is-better look in favor of more petite, natural breasts. At the same time, simultaneously, there are extremely artificial media personas who are normalizing surgery. Arguably the most fetishized woman of the moment, Kim Kardashian West, has a body that, to quote Tina Fey, “was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”

I was curious to get a man’s opinion on the subject, so I called up an art director friend of mine—I’ll call him Steve—in his mid-forties who has dated a lot of women. He told me, “A couple years ago I was dating a model. She had to go to a lingerie casting, and her agent told her to put cutlets into her bra, which took her from a B cup up to a C. Well, the difference walking down the street with her with just one increase in cup size was extraordinary. She got so much more attention, from both men and women.”

Despite this little experiment, however, Steve says he’s ultimately not a fan of implants. “Fake breasts are all about first impressions—that ba-bang,” he said. “But for me, when I’m with a woman who has fake breasts, or even a nose job or whatever, on a much deeper level, it just makes me think that person is insecure. It might be initially appealing, but when you find out they’ve actually altered their body, it’s an immediate turn-off, because, really, being confident is the ultimate power of seduction.” In the end, Steve said, “It doesn’t matter what you look like. Some people know how to work what they’ve got, and some people don’t.”

I realize that I’m wading into dangerous territory here, but I have to say, I agree with him. I’m not claiming that women should be “natural.” What is “natural” when most of us dye our hair, use makeup, and wear all sorts of garments and undergarments to alter the exterior appearance of our bodies? But I feel capable of drawing a line, at least for myself. There is a distinct difference between dying one’s hair and undergoing an extremely invasive, expensive, and painful body-altering surgical procedure. Hair dye and makeup are a temporary expression of one’s personality—they’re decorative, in line with the timeless desire to adorn oneself with beautiful things. In my opinion, unless you are transgender, surgery is a step too far. A confident woman doesn’t need fake boobs.

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair and Makeup: Ingeborg

The post Breathless: Why Are Breast Implants More Popular Than Ever? appeared first on Vogue.

Festival season has begun, which is exciting for anyone who likes having sex in uncomfortable places with unshowered high people. Festival hookups are at best hot and spontaneous, and at worst sloppy, gross, and involve having to remove glitter from your vagina afterward. But they are a reality. Something about the combination of too much sun, too much alcohol, and a soundtrack of FKA twigs just makes people want to touch strangers. But remember, a festival is like a war zone: You can’t go in unprepared.

If the primary objective of your festival experience this summer is to hook up, you should first do some research into the type of people that attend the festival(s) you have in mind. For instance, if you don’t like coked-out A&R dudes, then you probably should avoid SXSW, and if the idea of a white guy with dreads wearing a tutu and a metal eyepatch isn’t your thing, then maybe steer clear of Burning Man. However, if you love hipster appropriation of indigenous peoples’ culture, then you should definitely hit Coachella.

I spent my late teens and early twenties in England, which is a mecca for music festivals. My festival partner-in-crime was Maria, now a 31-year-old music manager living in Barcelona. Maria has a passion for boys in bands. (Or boys who look like they could be in a band. Or really just boys.) For years, Maria and I would do the festival rounds: Glastonbury and Bestival in the U.K., Primavera and Sónar in Barcelona, Melt! in Germany, etc. (In hindsight this seems bizarre to me, given that I now find live music quite painful, large crowds give me anxiety, and you literally couldn’t pay me to sleep in a tent.) The problem with Maria as a festival partner, however, was that there was a roughly 90 percent chance that at some point in the evening she would disappear with a random 19-year-old. One year, at Primavera, she hooked up with a different guy every day of the four-day festival. The woman has skills.

“A festival hookup is a lot like a holiday romance,” says Maria. “You’re in this bubble of fun for a few days, you’re free of your regular responsibilities, and your senses are heightened. People let their guard down, so it becomes easier to approach one another. And you’re surrounded by music, which always makes experiences more epic.” All of this, she says, facilitates the hookup process. “Once, while watching Japandroids at Primavera,” she told me, “I looked up and saw this hot skater next to me, and we literally didn’t even exchange any words, we just started making out.”

Another way to analyze the situation would be to say that, at a festival, everyone’s standards are lower. For instance, in the real world, I care about what people have to say, about their ideas, passions, vocabulary (yeah, I’m one of those), etc. At festivals, it’s too loud to really hear what anyone’s saying, and you’re too drunk to care, so everyone essentially regresses to their most primal selves. You’re left sizing up potential hookups based on looks and dance moves alone.

The problem with that, however, is that at a festival, it often feels like you’re in a sea of clones. It’s more difficult to read people based on their appearance, because so many people abandon their personal style, opting instead for a “person at a festival” costume. Avoid falling victim to this yourself! Resist the temptation to buy a turban and a fringe-y suede vest from Urban Outfitters. It’s not interesting to be one of 1,000 streetwalker Pocahontases. And don’t confuse a ticket to Coachella for a time machine back to the sixties. Yes, thank you, we have all seen stock images of Woodstock. But this is 2015, and you’re at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs, and there’s literally zero need for you to be wearing rain boots in the middle of the desert.

But lets get down to logistics. According to Maria, there’s a festival kit of essentials that every girl should carry: wet wipes (self-explanatory), a bikini (depending on location), basic makeup, makeup remover (“because at the end of the night you’re going to look like a monster”), sunglasses, sunscreen, and condoms. I’d personally add lube to that list, because after a day in the sun, drinking, and taking “mood-enhancing substances,” you might need a little hydration help. Also, as I mentioned earlier, remember that the festival will likely dictate the type of hookup you will have. “British festivals are fun,” says Maria, “but tend to involve camping, which is not ideal for hookups.” (You should mentally prepare yourself for the possibility of having sex in a tent.) “Urban festivals are more civilized because you can go back to an actual bed and can even have a beautiful walk around the city the next day.”

At a festival, there are generally two types of hookups that can happen: the random sexual encounter, which is straightforward, and the festival romance, which is when you form a pseudo-relationship with someone for the length of the festival. “Something about festivals,” Maria told me, “is that hookups don’t often lead to sex, because at the end of the night, you’re too tired and wasted to actually get down to business. Or you’re each there with a group of friends, and it’s difficult to ever find real alone time.” This detail often defines the festival romance: You can’t have sex, so you think you’re in love.

The main thing to remember: Whichever type of hookup you’re having, be realistic about it. “If you have sex, be prepared that when the music goes off and the lights come up, you might not be as ecstatic about your partner as you thought you were,” says Maria. “But don’t beat yourself up about it. Or be open to having an idyllic romantic weekend while understanding that it’s not necessarily going to lead somewhere. Most of the people you meet won’t be from the same place as you, so don’t be delusional and think your festival romance is going to last forever.”

Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever.

Hair and Makeup: Ingeborg

The post Breathless: Dos and Don’ts for the Music Festival Hookup appeared first on Vogue.